Sitka Music Festival is Alaska’s premiere classical music event, with some of the finest musicians from around the world here for a month of concerts and other events.
This year, the festival runs from June 3 through June 29, with formal evening concerts Fridays and Saturdays, at Harrigan Centennial Hall.
Along with the evening concerts, there are free one-hour concerts at restaurants; a free family concert; an open house at the festival’s Stevenson Hall; a crab feed at Crescent Harbor; a dinner cruise; and a brunch.
The festival was founded by Paul Rosenthal in 1972. He had just finished instruction with master violinist Jascha Heifetz when he came to town with the Arctic Chamber Orchestra, of Fairbanks, and was inspired by Sitka and the Harrigan Centennial Hall’s stage, with its wall of windows giving a view of Sitka’s harbor as a backdrop to concerts. He invited four colleagues to join him for the first festival, and it has grown ever since.
Rosenthal retired in 2011, handing the artistic director job to Zuill Bailey, widely considered one of the finest cellists in the world – he won a Grammy in 2017 for instrumental solo and was associated with two other Grammy winners in the classical music category.
Bailey also is the artistic director of the El Paso Pro Musica (Texas); the Northwest Bach Festival in Spokane; and the Mesa Arts Center Series in Arizona; and is a professor of cello at the University of Texas at El Paso.
A change for the festival has been the purchase and renovation of Stevenson Hall on the former Sheldon Jackson College campus – which for many years was “home” for the festival musicians. The address is 104 Jeff Davis Street.
Information is available at www.sitkamusicfestival.org and info@sitkamusicfestival.org. The mailing address is 104 Jeff Davis St., Sitka, AK 99835, and the phone number is (907) 747-6774.
