Summer may be the off-season for most orchestras, but not for Summermusik. They’re turning up the heat — and the tempo.
The Summermusik season runs July 30 through Aug. 23, and the festival’s lineup is the most exciting and diverse in its 10-year history. There are more of the popular and frequently sold-out Chamber Crawls, as well as the Sunday afternoon series at venues that include the Cincinnati Museum Center and Covington’s Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption.
Renowned violinist Rachel Barton Pine makes her long-awaited Cincinnati debut this season, joining an exciting lineup of featured artists that includes the acclaimed Kronos Quartet, Cincinnati favorite pianist Terrence Wilson, Tuvan throat singer SoRIAH and Irish musicians Liz Knowles and Kieran O’Hare.
Programs include world premieres, classical favorites and locally-sourced world music. That’s the goal for Summermusik’s music director Eckart Preu. “We try to provide a narrative that links together music you’d ordinarily never hear back-to-back with a familiar piece from Beethoven or Gershwin or Mozart,” he says, speaking from his home in Spokane. “I’m addicted travel,” he adds, “So world music is always part of our programs. Our programs combine world travel and time travel.”
The journey begins on July 30 with a Chamber Crawl at Rhinegeist’s Clubhouse featuring Turkish music followed by a weekend on the Silk Road with works by Italian, Syrian, Israeli, Turkish, Chinese and Mongolian composers, including a world premiere. Even more exciting are the featured soloists, Barton Pine and SoRIAH.
Barton Pine has performed with major orchestras around the world and is a passionate advocate for new music — through her foundation, she’s commissioned or collected over 900 works by Black composers. She and the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra will present the world premiere of Malek Jandali’s Violin Concerto in Cincinnati, after recording it in 2022 with Marin Alsop leading the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Jandali was born in Germany, raised in Syria and now makes his home in the U.S. He dedicated this concerto to “all women who thrive with courage.”
SoRIAH is the stage persona of Enrique Ugalde, an acknowledged master of the ancient style of throat singing practiced in Tuva, a region in southern Siberia.
“He’s working with arranger Alba Torremocha on that piece that brings the technique into our own time,” Preu explains.
The next day, on Aug. 3, travel to Venice by way of the Cathedral Basilica in Covington for a concert of works by Vivaldi and Barbara Strozzi, with Barton Pine and the Summermusik chorus led by Daniel Parsley.
The following weekend, the legendary Kronos Quartet arrives for two concerts featuring world and Midwest premieres and a performance with CCM Preparatory Department students.
The Aug. 9 concert opens with I Have Seen the Future by Matt Browne, the first winner of the Kreitler Commission Competition. On his website, Browne writes that the title comes from a 1939 World’s Fair souvenir badge, with further inspiration from 1950s and ‘60s film scores.
“Structurally, this piece is designed like a 1960s science fiction short story anthology,” Preu says. “Each movement is inspired by historical writings on Artificial Intelligence and Robotics – topics more relevant now than ever.”
Kronos joins the CCO to perform a segment of The Sands, a brooding meditation on war by Terry Riley, composer of many of Kronos’s most iconic works, and the Midwest premiere of Jungyoon Wie’s Starlings, a CCO co-commission.
On Sunday, Aug. 10, Kronos moves to CCM’s Corbett Auditorium, joining members of CCM’s Preparatory Department and the Summermusik string quartet. It’s an extraordinary opportunity for the young musicians, part of Kronos’s commitment to education.
The weekend also marks a farewell to Cincinnati for Kronos violist and CCM faculty member Ayane Kozasa and cellist Paul Wiancko, who are relocating to Kronos’s home base in San Francisco.
On Aug. 16, pianist Terrence Wilson returns for a centennial celebration of art deco, the classy, sleek style that originated in Paris and is visible in buildings like the Cincinnati Museum Center and Netherland Plaza.
Preu says the weekend is time travel in both directions.
“We’re performing music from the 1920s and ‘30s and giving a world premiere,” he says. “You can hear American jazz and its influence on European music, especially from American composers Duke Ellington and John Alden Carpenter.”
Wilson has appeared with the CSO, the Xavier Piano Series and Chamber Music Cincinnati. He performs Ravel’s piano concerto, followed by Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in its original orchestration for jazz band.
Fast forward to the present with the world premiere of Marina López’s Moño. Her website’s biography describes López as “interested in deconstructing and reconfiguring Western classical musical forms in unexpected ways.”
She’ll be in town for the premiere and will lead a free class on graphic notation
The show on Aug. 17 offers the ultimate art deco experience with Wilson and CCO musicians at the Cincinnati Museum Center, the epitome of art deco elegance (and the world’s largest self-supporting half-dome structure) for a program of Ellington, Price, Poulenc, Debussy and more.
Summermusik’s concluding weekend celebrates the Emerald Isle with acclaimed masters of Irish music, Knowles and O’Hare, on uilleann pipes and featuring Cincinnati’s great Irish music and dance resources.
“This is more of a Pops concert,” Preu explains. “We have an arrangement of Irish folk songs and music from Riverdance and popular Irish films.”
The Sunday afternoon series will consist of Irish music workshops at the Irish Heritage Center.
Summermusik executive director Evan Gidley notes that many of the Chamber Crawls are close to being sold out, especially those at the Irish Heritage Center. Additional crawls are hosted at Rhinegeist, Covington’s Grand Ballroom and The Redmoor.
Gidley says that overall attendance has doubled since the first Summermusik series in 2015. He credits that to innovative programming and the CCO itself, whose membership includes several new members.
Preu adds, “I hope that more people will find out that if they love Beethoven and Mozart and they’re curious about new music and want new experiences, they know this is the place to go.”
The Summermusik Festival takes place from July 30-Aug. 23. For more information about Summermusik, visit summermusik.org.
This story is featured in CityBeat’s July 23 print edition.
This article appears in Jul 9-22, 2025.
