Attention Carmel Bach Festival fans! The 89th season of our community’s revered and longest-running music festival runs from July 11 through July 25, with performances in Carmel and throughout the Monterey Peninsula. This year, the Festival and its acclaimed international ensemble dives into the intriguing theme of “the nature of sound.”
The Festival’s Artistic Director and Principal Conductor Grete Pedersen says, “Our theme invites us to listen more deeply, not only to music, but to the world around us. Carmel offers this in abundance–the Pacific Ocean waves, the wind in the cypress trees, the stillness of the evening. And…the cars, the coffee making, and people chatting. All of it becomes part of the festival’s soundscape.”
“This year, we are excited to dive into the roots of the Carmel Bach Festival and present programs that look to both the past and the present,” says Executive Director Nathan Lutz. “As we continue to dig deeper into the Festival’s history, we are reminded that it was born in 1935, in a Carmel-by-the-Sea defined by artistic freedom, curiosity and experimentation. The founders, Hazel Watrous and Dene Denny, embraced modern music wholeheartedly, nurturing a creative haven where new works thrived alongside the music of Bach, where composers, writers and artists lived and worked side by side.” Early works as well as contemporary voices will offer audiences a rich musical conversation worthy of the early Carmel vision.
Ticketholders will hear Bach cantatas, Haydn’s oratorio “The Seasons,” Vivaldi’s famous “Four Seasons,” Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, Handel’s “Water Music,” and modern works by Kaija Saariaho, Nils Henrik Asheim, Einojuhani Rautavaara and Puerto-Rican-born composer Angélica Negrón, among others.
In addition to Pedersen, the Festival orchestra and chorale will be led by Andrew Megill, artistic advisor and director of choral activities, and Peter Hanson, concertmaster. This summer, five vocal soloists will be engaged. They are soprano Clara Rottsolk, tenor Thomas Cooley, countertenor Reginald Mobley and baritones Jesse Blumberg and Edward Nelson.
The Festival has named Angélica Negrón as the summer’s featured composer, with several of her works appearing throughout the season. She is known for combining classical and electronic music, unusual instruments, and found sounds. Her works often draw inspiration from nature, including Marejada, featured on Friday’s main concert, which incorporates recordings of waves and birds from the beaches of Puerto Rico.
Negron says, “I’m beyond thrilled to explore how nature, science, technology, acoustics, field recordings and music intersect with human connection, curiosity and perception through shared listening, with the wonderful Carmel Bach Festival community.” She has had works commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Opera Philadelphia, New York Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Kronos Quartet and Roomful of Teeth, among others.
In addition to the main concerts, audiences can again enjoy a variety of chamber concerts, master classes, lectures and special events. This year, there is a new location, the historic Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur. For details, see www.BachFestival.org. For more information call (831) 624-1521. Tickets go on sale soon.
Youth Music Monterey County
Youth Music Monterey County presents Hidden Depths, a concert performed by young musicians from across Monterey County on Sunday, March 1 at 3 p.m. at Carmel’s Sunset Center. The program includes two special collaborations with the organization’s core ensembles. Musicians from South County Strings join the Junior Youth Orchestra, and the Honors Orchestra accompanies Honors Concerto Competition winner Katherine Lin in Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto.
Lin is a 12-year-old violinist from Carmel, recognized as a young artist of impressive technical skill and emotional depth. She currently studies at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Pre-College program. She has recently appeared with the Junior Bach Festival, Carmel Bach Festival and Hidden Valley Music Seminars’ 10th Annual Musical Gathering. She is the winner of the 2023 Youth Music Monterey Junior Concerto Competition and the 2025 Honors Concerto Competition.
In addition to the Bruch violin concerto, the program also includes Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony, Mendelssohn’s “The Hebrides (Fingal’s Cave),” Jeremiah Clarke’s “Prince of Denmark’s March,” and excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake.” Music director Alan Truong, says “Emotional content is the name of the game, and when it comes to conveying intense feeling through music, these students have everybody beat.”
For more tickets and information see www.youthmusicmonterey.org or call (831) 375-1992.
Theater Live!
Pacific Repertory Theatre launched its 2026 Season of Wonder on Valentine’s Day with Michael Frayn’s hilarious 1982 comedy “Noises Off,” at the Golden Bough Playhouse. A near-perfect modern farce, Frayn’s masterpiece offers a sharply comic British window into the chaos that can bedevil live theater. Its three acts chart the unraveling of an ill-prepared sex farce called “Nothing On,” from a disastrous dress rehearsal to a touring production that collapses spectacularly onstage and off.
Often dubbed “the funniest farce ever written,” “Noises Off” is also a sly love letter to live performance. It makes a terrific start to PacRep’s season, smartly directed by the husband-and-wife team of Michael Champlin and Katie O’Bryon Champlin and performed by a spirited cast led by local favorites Julie Hughett as Dotty Otley and Michael Storm as Lloyd Dallas, along with Equity guest artist Michael Jacobs as Seldon Mowbray.
The irony, of course, is that this play demands consummate skill, razor-sharp timing and impeccable comic control even as it parodies their absence. PacRep’s ensemble rises to the challenge in a taut production sure to delight audiences throughout its month-long run.
The PacRep 2026 season at the Golden Bough Playhouse and the Forest Theater includes “Beetlejuice JR,” “Young Frankenstein,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Medea,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Come From Away” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Tickets and more information available at PacRep.org or by calling the Golden Bough Playhouse box office at (831) 622-0100.
New Canon News
Seated next to me at “Noises Off” was none other than Justine Stock, managing director of New Cannon Theater, who said she had news about their upcoming season. Here is her teaser. Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” set in 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, will be on stage June 11-28 at Carmel’s Outdoor Forest Theater. During the run of this play, the New Canon Theatre Lab will also present a special limited engagement described as an intimate work-in-progress by a celebrated artist, developed in collaboration with New Canon. Says Stock, “This presentation reflects our ongoing commitment to new work and artistic incubation, offering audiences a rare opportunity to experience a piece in development. Full details will be announced soon.” For more see www.newcanontheatre.org/
