Email
PrintA grand festival
Launched in 1997, the Festival’s annual Music in the Hole performance on July 4 has become an Independence Day favorite for residents and visitors alike.
(page 1 of 2)
One of the many amazing things about the Grand Teton Music Festival is how little it has changed during the past 50 years.
Sure, musicians have come and gone. Even music directors have changed—though there have been only four since 1962: Ernest Hagen, Ling Tung, Eiji Oue and the current maestro, Donald Runnicles.
The opening of Walk Festival Hall, in 1974, was a huge step that, perhaps more than any other single improvement, secured the future of the institution.
And the details of the season have changed, contracting to as few as five weeks, expanding to as many as nine, each week featuring two symphony concerts and one to three chamber programs. In fact, these days, the festival is no longer strictly a summer pleasure, but includes winter concerts and, with the addition of the Metropolitan Opera’s “Live in HD” series, fall and spring events, too.
And of course the budget has grown a bit over the decades. In its inaugural year, the final bill came to a bit over $66,000. These days it’s in the millions.
But the basic concept of the Grand Teton Music Festival has remained steadfast, which suggests a good idea that had needed little if any improvement: For 50 years, orchestral performers from across the continent—New York, Philadelphia, Toronto, Quebec, Indianapolis, St. Paul, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Houston, Dallas, Seattle, San Francisco, etc.—have gathered in Jackson during the summer months for music- and friend-making in the natural setting that only the Tetons can provide.
This summer, the friends gather again for seven weeks. In many ways, it’s just as Consuelo von Gontard and George Hufsmith—who together deserve the most credit for dreaming up the idea—imagined it back in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
