Festival News

Join Artistic Director Marc Neikrug, on a captivating exploration of the world of chamber music!

This new podcast, “SFCMF Unfiltered” offers a unique insider’s perspective on the Festival. In each episode, Marc delves into the upcoming season’s programming, revealing the stories behind the music and the talented artists who bring it to life.

Expect insightful discussions, engaging interviews, and a deeper appreciation for the artistry and intimacy of chamber music. Whether you’re a seasoned music lover or just discovering the joy of chamber music, this podcast is your invitation to go behind the curtain and experience the magic of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.

One of the most buzzworthy events of our 2025 season is our presentation of the Albuquerque-based Chatter Ensemble, which, on August 13, makes its Festival debut giving the first-ever Festival performance of Eight Songs for a Mad King, an avant-garde monodrama written in 1969 by the English composer Peter Maxwell Davies (1934–2016).

Next summer, the first sounds of our 52nd season are filled with the exquisite stylings of soprano Liv Redpath, who, on our season-opening concerts of July 13 & 14, makes her Festival debut singing Schubert’s gorgeous The Shepherd on the Rock—a roughly 12-minute work the composer wrote (one month before his death, at age 31) following a request from opera star Anna Milder-Hauptmann for a virtuosic concert piece that showcased her vocal and emotional range.

As friends of the Festival, you likely already know that there’s so much to be excited about and that subscriptions are on sale now. Subscriptions get you the best seats at the best prices and offer other benefits, too—like advance-purchase privileges for individual tickets (you can buy them before they go on sale to the general public in February), discounts on tickets for any added evening concerts, free ticket exchanges, and more.

When you’re an adventurous, risk-taking chamber-music group whose mission is to “champion new string quartet music and the transformative experiences that it creates,” being hailed by The New York Times as “fearless” and “one of contemporary music’s indispensable ensembles” signifies a particular level of “mission accomplished.” But as the three-time Grammy-nominated JACK Quartet—which makes its Festival debut next summer—approaches its 20th anniversary, the group is busier and more inspired (and inspiring) than ever, and we’re thrilled to offer two chances to hear them perform in our 2025 season.

One of the most exciting things about presenting our concerts every summer is that, in addition to welcoming back dozens of longtime friends, we welcome artists who are performing at the Festival for the very first time, too. In 2025, several thrilling artists are making their Festival debuts—including Colin Currie, who’s been called nothing less than “the world’s finest and most daring percussionist” by The Spectator, “an athlete and a star” by The Guardian, and a musician who’s “at the summit of percussion performance today” by Gramophone. On Thursday, August 7, at 12 p.m., you can catch Currie as he not only makes his Festival debut but also gives the Festival’s first-ever solo percussion recital!

Exciting news: On October 1, we’ll be welcoming our new Executive Director, Jim Griffith! Jim succeeds our wonderful Interim Executive Director, Amy Lam, who will be with us through September 30.

On Monday, we brought our extraordinary 51st season to an end, but the excitement continues as we move full speed ahead into getting ready for our 52nd season, which runs July 13–August 18, 2025.

On August 17, for our last Saturday concert of the season, our good friend (and good neighbor to the north)—Santa Fe Opera Music Director Harry Bicket—makes his first-ever Festival appearance conducting Handel’s wonderful Water Music, which was first performed not in the high desert but on the River Thames for King George I. Bicket leads an ensemble of Santa Fe Opera musicians—many of whom you’ll recognize as our longtime friends and collaborators—and plays the harpsichord, too!

Kirill Gerstein, one of the most lauded and in-demand pianists in the world, arrives in Santa Fe this week and stays through the end of the Festival’s 51st season to give three thrilling performances. On August 12, he appears as part of an all-star ensemble in Brahms’s “beautiful beyond words” Piano Quintet (to quote one of Brahms’s contemporaries), and the following day, on August 13, he gives a rich Romantic recital featuring works by Chopin, Liszt, and Schumann. On August 19, he helps bring the Festival’s season to a spectacular close with Janáček’s lyrical Violin Sonata—played alongside the stunning violinist John Storgårds—and then, as part of an exciting assortment of Festival favorites, he and the Dover Quartet share the stage for the first time in a powerhouse performance of Dvořák’s rousing Piano Quintet, Op. 81.

On August 11, the Escher String Quartet presents a first in the Festival’s 51-year history: a single-evening performance of all six of Bartók’s groundbreaking string quartets. Click below to read the Escher’s cellist, Brook Speltz, talk about what the experience is like—physically and mentally—for him as a musician (the Escher recently performed the quartets at Lincoln Center) and why the August 11 performance is a major musical moment you’ll want to experience and witness for yourself.

The excitement is building as the Festival gets ready to welcome—this Sunday and Monday—a longtime friend who has yet to perform in Santa Fe: Donald Runnicles, the general music director of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, music director of the Grand Teton Music Festival, and chief conductor–designate of the Dresden Philharmonic. Runnicles makes his highly anticipated Festival debut leading one of the most beloved large-scale works in the chamber music repertoire: Mahler’s early-20th-century “song-symphony” Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth).