“A sonic rainbow of adventurous musical offerings in classical and contemporary chamber and symphonic music, Latin jazz and Native American motifs” – Oregon Coast Today
The Siletz Bay Music Festival embraces its core values of excellence, harmony, community, inspiration, and vibrancy with a season full of relevance under new leadership. In his first official year as the festival’s newly appointed Artistic Director, acclaimed pianist and pedagogue Mei-Ting Sun brings a fresh perspective while upholding the commitment to exceptional music-making and diverse programming focus that has set the Siletz Bay Music Festival apart for decades At Sun’s recommendation, the festival has also engaged the dynamic conductor, Johann Stuckenbruck, an outstanding talent on the international stage. These two worldwide stars, who have shared history at the Royal Academy of Music in London, infuse the festival with renewed talent and vitality.
An elevated escape, just a few scenic hours from Portland, the Siletz Bay Music Festival is the Central Oregon Coast’s premier cultural event. With its presentation of 11 concerts at five venues in Lincoln City and Newport, this summer’s festival offers an adventurous program of chamber, jazz and orchestral music, a mix of seldom-performed masterworks and audience-pleasing favorites, performed by 52 artists who travel to the Oregon coast from locations around the world, beginning August 14 and running through August 24. The festival presents new faces this year alongside many of the more familiar artists who have helped the series evolve over 13 seasons.
Mei-Ting Sun is a Yamaha Artist, Professor of Piano at the Royal Academy of Music, and winner of the first Piano-e competition and the National Chopin Competition. He has performed the complete works for solo piano of Brahms, Chopin, and Debussy, in addition to all 32 Sonatas of Beethoven, and his career has taken him throughout most of the US, Latin America, Asia, and Europe, at venues such as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, Auditorio Nacional in Madrid, Tonhalle in Zurich, and Obecni Dum in Prague. Music Director of l’Orchestre Symphonique du Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, British-American conductor Johann Stuckenbruck is a rising star on the podium known for his technical excellence, versatility, and musical vision. Recent highlights for the 2024-25 Season include débuts with the Orchestre National de Bretagne and the Orchestre Symphonique du Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, as well as returns to the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège, the Royal Academy of Music, Salomon Orchestra, and the Covent Garden Chamber Orchestra.
Festival highlights include:
- Spirit of the Columbia, a new orchestral work by Portland-based musical icon Nancy Ives
- A musical tribute to the late Native American jazz legend Jim Pepper, whose ground-breaking music straddles the worlds of jazz and indigenous tradition
- A FREE family concert featuring a performance of Prokofiev’s iconic Peter and the Wolf arranged for wind quintet
- Performances of three all-time favorites from the mid-20th-century repertoire
- Copland’s Appalachian Spring
- Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue featuring Artistic Director Mei-Ting Sun on piano
- Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez, featuring the festival debut of Bulgarian-born guitar virtuoso Georgi Dimitrov-JoJo
The chamber music series includes several nods to the 150th anniversary of the birth of seminal French composer Maurice Ravel, and in addition to familiar pieces from the classical canon, includes compositions by Hungary’s Ernest Von Dohanyi, Italy’s Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Austria’s Alban Berg, and American William Kroll.
Two spectacular new artists imbue the festival’s chamber music concerts with new colors: the multiple prize-winning guitarist Georgi Dimitrov-JoJo and Pacific Northwest-based horn player Dr. Daniel Partridge. Georgi was the first-ever classical guitarist to perform at the prestigious Bach Fest Leipzig, where his interpretations of Bach’s music were critically acclaimed and attracted approval from the audience’s standing ovations. MusicWeb International recommended his Naxos Bach Album as “one of the best guitar recordings of music by J.S. Bach … representing excellent technical facility, refined musicianship, and deep understanding of the music.” Daniel is well-known regionally as the principal horn player with Symphony Tacoma and the Vancouver (WA) Symphony, and is a regular performer with the Oregon Symphony, the Eugene Symphony, the Portland Opera, and the Oregon Ballet Theater. The chamber music series also includes many beloved returning musicians, including cellists Katherine Schultz and Isaac Ward, pianists Mei-Ting Sun and Michelle Chow, violist Miriam English Ward, violinists James Stern and Mimi Jung, and clarinetist Ricky Smith.
WHAT: The Siletz Bay Music Festival – 10 days of extraordinary music on the Oregon Coast
WHEN: August 14 – 24, 2025
WHERE: Events take place at the Lincoln City Cultural Center, the Lincoln City Congregational Church, Newport’s Pacific Maritime Heritage Center, Lincoln City’s Regatta Park Bandshell, and Chinook Winds Casino Resort.
TICKETS: A schedule of Festival performances, program information, and ticket sales are available at SiletzBayMusic.org. Siletz Bay Music Festival offers incentives to encourage people to buy tickets early. Discount packages for multiple events are available, as well as student ticket pricing for all concerts except Musical Tapas and the Benefit.
Siletz Bay Music Festival
Welcoming • Magical • Extraordinary
The Siletz Bay Music Festival shares extraordinary musical experiences on the Central Oregon Coast, creating an epicenter of cultural enrichment through uplifting, world-class concert music. Inextricably linked to the wild, magical beauty of Oregon’s rugged coastline and its diverse population, the festival welcomes and connects the community through thoughtfully designed programs that showcase a wide variety of international talent. Always maintaining the highest quality and often featuring celebrated, GRAMMY Award-winning artists, the festival ensures vibrancy, relevance, and excellence. It presents “a sonic rainbow of adventurous musical offerings in classical and contemporary chamber and symphonic music, Latin jazz and Native American motifs” (Oregon Coast Today), celebrating the many voices and styles that bring harmony to this region.
