The Summermusik Festival returns once again for its 12th annual month-long celebration of all things orchestral.
In partnership with the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, this year’s festival will feature three world premieres, numerous award-winning local artists and two internationally acclaimed guest artists making their Summermusik debuts. It will take place from Aug. 4-29 at various venues in the Greater Cincinnati region.
“This year’s festival is set to be one of our most dynamic yet with programs that aim to inspire, educate and entertain,” Music Director Eckart Preu said in a statement. He’s now in his 10th season with the organization.
The 2026 Festival will include two guest artists making their Summermusik debuts. Renowned cellist Zuill Bailey joins the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra on the first mainstage of the season, which celebrates America250.
Bailey will perform the world premiere cello concerto “Visions of Humanity and Unity.” Each movement of the five-movement concerto has been composed by a different internationally-acclaimed composer: Mark O’Connor, Avner Dorman, Enrico Chapela, Zhou Tian and Chanda Dancy. The result is a piece that, in the words of Preu, “celebrates the way different American perspectives can coexist together to create one harmonious whole.”
The opening program will also feature world premieres by Kreitler Commission Competition winner Simon Rivet and composer Kanniks Kannikeswaran. Puerto Rican cuatro-virtuoso Fabiola Méndez – who counts global superstar Bad Bunny among her many fans – makes her Summermusik and Cincinnati debut with a weekend of music exclusively by composers of Puerto Rican descent.
Summermusik regular and audience favorite Roger Klug returns to The Redmoor for a Chamber Crawl highlighting the legacy of American rock legends like Bob Dylan and Brian Wilson, and award-winning, Cincinnati-based soprano Victoria Okafor joins the CCO for a semi-staged performance of Kurt Weill’s 20th century masterpiece “The Seven Deadly Sins.”
Attendees to this year’s festival can expect to hear a mixture of familiar classics and new works.
“We are excited to keep building on our reputation for being an ensemble that champions works by living composers,” Executive Director Evan Gidley said. “We are lucky to have an audience that embraces classics like ‘Appalachian Spring’ as enthusiastically as they do a world premiere by one of our Kreitler Commission Competition winners.”
The 2026 Festival includes works by Copland, Mozart, Beethoven and Shostakovich as well as works by no less than seventeen living composers – including Max Richter, Angélica Negrón, Roberto Sierra and the 2026 Kreitler Commission Competition winner Simon Rivet. The festival will close with a classic Summermusik combination of the expected and unexpected: a program that pairs Mozart’s Symphony No. 35, “Haffner” with the orchestral musical of American cultural raconteur Frank Zappa.
The School of Creative and Performing Arts in downtown Cincinnati will continue to host the Saturday Mainstage concerts, and the festival will once again return to The Redmoor for two Chamber Crawl concerts. Summermusik concerts will take place at a number of new venues in Cincinnati, including Delhi Event Center, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Kenwood, HighGrain Brentwood Brewpub, and The Woodward Theater, as well as venues in Northern Kentucky including the Newport Syndicate and St. Agnes Catholic Church.
Festival passes go on sale on Monday, March 16, while single-night tickets will be available starting Monday, April 6. For more information, visit the official Summermusik website.