The 2026 Sarasota Music Festival will have a new and reduced look that organizers hope will have an even bigger impact on the young musicians who train there, their faculty mentors and the audiences who attend concerts.
The closing of the Hyatt Regency Sarasota hotel, within walking distance of the festival’s home base at the Sarasota Orchestra’s Beatrice Friedman Symphony Center, precipitated a series of changes that have been discussed for years based on feedback from audiences and participants.
For most of its 61 years, the festival ran for three weeks and featured fellows (many of them college students or those just beginning their professional careers) and an international array of faculty members performing in nine to 12 concerts each June. For many years, the festival welcomed 60 fellows training with a rotating lineup of 40 faculty members.
This year’s event will be cut back to two weeks and feature just four concerts, but it will provide new opportunities for the young musicians to work more closely and side-by-side with their mentors. The festival has accepted 40 fellows and invited about 20 faculty members.
For years, the fellows have indicated a desire for a shorter festival, which would allow them time to also train at other summer festivals.
“We do a survey every year, and the closing of the Hyatt gave us the opportunity to implement some of the things people have been wanting anyway,” said RoseAnne McCabe, senior vice president of artistic operations for Sarasota Orchestra. She has overseen the festival since she joined the staff in 2000.
“Most fellows go on to another festival or want to spend time with their families before going back to school,” she said. One of the biggest changes being made is that the fellows and faculty members will share the stage for each of the four concerts this summer.
“We know the faculty love working with the fellows and they always tell us they learn as much from the fellows as the fellows learn from them,” McCabe said. “It’s this incredible artistic opportunity. The fellows are the best of the best, rising stars, the players who become the next concertmasters and form new chamber ensembles.”
Audiences have also shown with their ticket-buying habits that they are not as interested in attending every concert as they did in the past.
“We used to have people who would literally buy tickets to everything,” she said. “We’ve been starting to see in the last seven to 10 years that people were just buying one or two tickets. It wasn’t so much the repertoire. They just would buy tickets to a Friday or Saturday night concert, and not both.”
The first three concerts will feature an assortment of different chamber ensembles presented in Holley Hall at the Symphony Center. The final concert will feature orchestral music at the Sarasota Opera House.
Last year, the festival parted ways with pianist Jeffrey Kahane, who had served as artistic director for nine seasons. He was only the third artistic director in the history of the festival, which was launched in 1965 by the orchestra’s longtime music director Paul Wolfe. Kahane was preceded as artistic director for 10 years by pianist Robert Levin.
This year’s program has been put together by several faculty members. “They helped choose repertoire that would be beneficial for fellows at this stage of their careers and that would be fabulous for the audiences. One of the faculty members called them all ‘barnburners,’” McCabe said.
The festival was founded on a chamber music foundation and thinking about the orchestra from a chamber musician’s mindset, she said.
“The best musicians know how to listen to their colleagues, communicate with them and then are better able to play with 80 people by their side,” McCabe said. “What’s happening in colleges and conservatories, students get a great education with orchestra and phenomenal conductors who come to their schools for a concert, but they don’t get this intense chamber music experience.”
This year, participants will be staying a few blocks away at the Art Ovation Hotel with shuttle buses making regular loops to take them back and forth for rehearsals, one-on-one lessons, master classes and more.
The changes appear to have been welcomed by the fellows and audiences, said Gordon Greenfield, the orchestra’s chief marketing and communications officer.
“Ticket sales are wonderful and we had a near record number of fellow applications, so the reception for this has been fantastic. When we lost the Hyatt, it became an opportunity to take a blank piece of paper and figure out what would the ideal festival be.”
Here is a look at the 2026 Sarasota Music Festival:
For ticket information: sarasotaorchestra.org/festival; 941-953-3434;
“Levin Lecture”: 4 p.m. June 3, Holley Hall. Pianist and former artist director Robert Levin returns for his annual lecture about music. “He never knows what he’s going to talk about, but he talks for about an hour from the top of his head in the most coherent, informative, interesting and enlightening way. I feel bad calling it lecture because it’s so much more,” McCabe said. $15-$25
“Beethoven and Mendelssohn”: 7:30 p.m. June 5, Holley Hall. The program features faculty members Alan Stepansky, cello; Peter Kolkay, bassoon; Ten Li, viola; and David Bowlin, violin, joining with fellows to perform Beethoven’s Septet, Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet, and two pieces by female composers – Florence Price’s “Adoration” and Amy Beach’s Piano Quintet. $40-$50
“Mozart & Schumann”: 7:30 p.m. June 6, Holley Hall. It features faculty members Alan Stepansky, cello; Mark Nuccio, clarinet; Toyin Spelmman-Diaz, oboe; Robert Levin, piano. The program includes Mozart’s Serenade No. 11 in E-flat; Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet; Louis Spohr’s Nonet and Ruth Crawford Seeger’s Suite for Wind Quintet. $35-$50
“Tchaikovsky, Ravel & Dvořák”: 7:30 p.m. June 12, Holley Hall. Faculty members include Alexander Kerr, violin; Ellen dePasquale, violin; Rebecca Young, viola; Brinton Smith, cello; Kimberly Cole Luevano, clarinet; Jeff Scott, horn; and Benjamin Kamins, bassoon. The program features Dvořák’s Piano Quintet No. 2, Tchaikovsky’s “Souvenir de Florence”; Maurice Ravel’s “Ma mere l’Oye (Mother Goose)”; and Richard Strauss’ Sextet from ‘Capriccio.’” $35-$50
“The Masters in Concert”: 7:30 p.m. June 13, Sarasota Opera House. Nicholas McGegan will conduct, with Alexander Kerr as concertmaster and Jasmine Choi, a past fellow, as soloist. The program features Franz Schubert’s Overture in the Italian Style, Mozart’s Flute Concerto No. 2 and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. $29-$75
This story was originally published by ArtsBeat, a nonprofit newsroom producing coverage of the arts scene in the Sarasota area. Learn more at ArtsBeat.org
