The Skaneateles Festival welcomes back the explosive and exploratory saxophonist, Joshua Redman. In over 20 albums he has garnered top honors from critics and audiences, including a 2023 Grammy nomination for the album ‘LongGone’ by Joshua, Brad Mehldau, Christian McBride, and Brian Blade. Don’t miss the opportunity to hear a jazz great at the top of his game.!

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Festival Finale: Joshua Redman Quartet

Anyela’s Vineyards

Steven Banks is a charismatic ambassador for the classical saxophone. Winner of the prestigious 2022 Avery Fisher Career Grant, he captivates audiences with his balance of refined lyricism and virtuosic flair. Traversing classical, contemporary, and popular repertoire, he leads a program that includes Saint-Saëns Sonata for Saxophone and Piano (with Xak Bjerken, piano), and Banks’s own quintet for strings and saxophone, Cries, Sighs, and Dreams.

Steven Banks & Friends

First Presbyterian Church

The Skaneateles Festival in collaboration with Seymour  Library  with the support of Cayuga County Tourism are proud to present an evening with Steven Banks.

Outreach Event: Steven Banks at Seymour Library

Seymour Public Library

The Grammy-winning Parker Quartet (“something extraordinary,” New York Times) leads a Beethoven-based program that includes a work by Beethoven’s teacher, Haydn; three short works inspired by Beethoven’s Quartets, by Suzanne Farrin, Anthony Cheung, and Michi Wiancko (also heard at the Festival as violinist); and Beethoven’s monumental String Quartet, op. 130 (with the epic Grosse Fuge). The Parker Quartet illuminates Beethoven’s quartet with an engaging verbal introduction to the work.

Parker Quartet: Beethoven Illuminated

The Skaneateles Festival in collaboration with Auburn Public Theatre with the support of Cayuga County Tourism are proud to present an afternoon with Steven Banks featuring Xak Bjerken.

Outreach Event: Steven Banks at Auburn Public Theatre

Auburn Public Theater

Find out how the saxophone can sing, talk, laugh, and everything in between, with Steven Banks, the classical saxophonist who has taken the music world by storm. Hear diverse music for saxophone and piano (with pianist Xak Bjerken) by Saint-Saëns, tango master Astór Piazzolla, and others.

KidsFest with Steven Banks

Classical saxophonist and composer Steven Banks joins the Skaneateles Festival for a week long residency highlighted by a series of outreach performances in Onondaga and Cayuga Counties. This year the theme of the Skaneateles Festival’s outreach program is Following Harriet.

Outreach Event: Steven Banks at Salt City Market

Salt City Market

The Skaneateles Festival welcomes back the “exciting conductor-less band of strings” ECCO (New Yorker). Joined by founder-violinist Nick Kendall of Time for Three and recent 2023 Grammy-winner, the orchestra performs beloved music by Mozart as well as American composer William Grant Still’s joyous Dances from Panama. Eminent American pianist Shai Wosner joins ECCO to bask in the orchestra’s signature “warm glow” of sound (New York Times).

Mozart Under the Stars

Skaneateles High School

ECCO (East Coast Chamber Orchestra) leads a sonic exploration of strings, including the violin, viola, cello, and double bass. Learn about the many sides of stringed instruments, from sweet singing to fiery fiddling! The virtuoso players of ECCO share music by Mozart, Grieg, and some musical surprises.

KidsFest with ECCO

Mandana Barn

ECCO (East Coast Chamber Orchestra) fills the stage to share music of remembrance, nostalgia, and the will to live life to its fullest. The program features Edvard Grieg’s heartrending Holberg Suite “in the olden style”; Jamaican composer Eleanor Alberga’s tender elegy for her mother; and Franz Schubert’s searing, intense “Death and the Maiden” Quartet, heard here in Gustav Mahler’s unforgettable arrangement for string orchestra.

Ecco Plays Schubert

Kelli O’Hara, star of stage and screen, has established herself as one of Broadway’s greatest leading ladies. Her portrayal of Anna in The King and I garnered her the 2015 Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical; she recently starred in HBO’s The Gilded Age and at the Metropolitan Opera in The Hours, and has numerous Grammy, Emmy, and Olivier nominations. She shares a selection of her favorite Broadway songs.

Kelli O’Hara: Songs From My Heart

The Skaneateles Festival in collaboration with the Seward House Museum is proud to present an afternoon with Kearstin Piper Brown! This event will feature the piece Fortitude, commisssioned by the Skaneateles Festival, inspired by the life of Hariet Tubman.

Outreach Event: Kearstin Piper Brown at Seward House Museum

Seward House Museum

7:00 PM BACKSTAGE PASS: Join composer Nailah Nombeko; soprano Kearstin Piper Brown; Harriet Tubman’s great-great-grand niece, Judith Gladys Bryant; and the Festival’s Artistic Directors for a conversation about Harriet Tubman’s life in the area, her enduring influence, and the new work about her to be premiered later the same evening, Fortitude.

Following Harriet

250 years later, Mozart’s music continues to uplift and entrance us, as well as a new generation of composers. Hear Mozart’s joyous Exultate Jubilate for soprano and strings (featuring Kearstin Piper Brown); the ultra-famous Eine kleine Nachtmusik; a new work by jazz polymath Vijay Iyer based on Mozart’s music; and Brahms’s lyrical passionate Piano Quartet in C Minor, in a genre invented by Mozart.

Inventing Mozart

Banjo king Béla Fleck is at the epicenter of American folk and bluegrass – but the 15-time Grammy winner has also “baffled the Grammy awards” (New York Times), winning for country, jazz, pop, world music, classical crossover, and folk. Returning to “the root of my musical soul,” as he puts it, Fleck has assembled a large ensemble of fellow bluegrass all-stars, including the charismatic Grammy-nominated singer, Sierra Hull; ever a restless explorer, Fleck is sure to seek out new musical terrain.

Béla Fleck: My Bluegrass Heart

Auburn Junior High School

The Danish Quartet may well be the world’s most in-demand string quartet. The foursome from Denmark has captivated audiences worldwide with its blend of apparent ease and wild abandon. Their program showcases both their mastery of classics by Bach, Haydn, and Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, as well as their inimitable, joyful renditions of Nordic folk music. Hear why the Danish Quartet is “the string quartet’s best hope” (Wall Street Journal).

The Danish String Quartet

Guitar virtuoso and Syracuse native Eliot Fisk joins Festival Artistic Directors Aaron Wunsch and Julia Bruskin for a discussion of Fisk’s life in music, the magic of the guitar, and a preview of the new season.

Opening Night: Eliot Fisk & Friends

By popular demand, Eliot Fisk opens the Festival with a solo recital for the Skaneateles Festival’s first-ever matinee concert. More details to come!

Skaneateles Festival

Aug 19, 2023

Festival Finale: Joshua Redman Quartet

Aug 18, 2023

Steven Banks & Friends

Aug 17, 2023

Outreach Event: Steven Banks at Seymour Library

Aug 17, 2023

Parker Quartet: Beethoven Illuminated

Aug 16, 2023

Outreach Event: Steven Banks at Auburn Public Theatre

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