A slimmer Sarasota Music Festival aims to be as satisfying as ever

Since it was founded 62 years ago, the Sarasota Music Festival has evolved into a reason for classical music fans to stick around Sarasota past the end of season. Each June, the festival brings together student musicians on a professional track with faculty members who are established performers. The "fellows" and faculty rehearse together and then play side-by-side in public concerts.

Like the Perlman Music Program Suncoast over the winter holidays, the SMF attracts regular patrons who follow the careers of the fellows, some of whom return to the festival to teach while others play in orchestras and in solo concerts around the world.

Sarasota’s arts patrons provide support for the SMF, founded at New College of Florida by Paul Wolfe and then merged with the Sarasota Orchestra’s predecessor in 1985. That’s not expected to change this year, when the festival runs only two weeks (June 1-13) rather than its normal three.

For nearly a decade, the Sarasota Music Festival was led by Jeffrey Kahane, a Los Angeles-based conductor, pianist, educator and scholar. Kahane and the SMF parted ways in August 2025. 

This year’s festival was organized by Sarasota Orchestra employees and faculty, with heavy input from its fellows. The result is fewer public performances and more interaction between fellows and faculty. 

Is it still worth staying in town for? Definitely, even despite last-minute changes in the schedule and faculty.

For RoseAnne McCabe, Sarasota Orchestra senior vice-president of artistic operations, the numbers tell only part of the story, but we'll go through them anyway. There were 452 applications this year for 40 openings for fellows. The last time the number of applications was that high, says McCabe, was in 2009, when there were 85 fellows. Last year, there were 60 fellows. There have traditionally been 40 faculty members and this year there are 20.

"The spirit of the festival hasn’t changed," McCabe says. "I've been here a long time. When Paul (Wolfe) founded the festival, it was really about the mentoring, the relationship between faculty and fellows. That hasn’t changed."

After surveying its fellows, McCabe says the festival will have fellows and faculty play together on all the programs this year and fellows will perform full chamber pieces with faculty side-by-side, not excerpts.

In recent years, the SMF has held about 10 public concerts. This year, there will be just four. But they still contain the star power the community has come to expect, even if some familiar faces like Kahane, cellist Mike Block and violinist/fiddler Tessa Lark are gone. Unfortunately, a mainstay of the festival, former SMF artistic director Robert Levin, was forced to cancel.

He was replaced by pianist and composer Michael Stephen Brown, whom Sarasota audiences will recognize from his appearances with La Musica, the Sarasota chamber group that shares its artistic director, Wu Han, with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

 In April, Brown debuted his "The Carnival of Endangered Wonders" at two La Musica concerts in Sarasota. The new composition was paired with the 1886 piece by Camille Saint-Saëns, “Carnival of the Animals," that inspired Brown's piece.

Those want to see Brown can catch him on June 6, when he will replace Levin in a concert entitled "Mozart and Schumann." He will perform Robert Schumann's Piano Quartet. 

The program also includes faculty artists Alan Stepansky on cello, Mark Nuccio on clarinet and Andreas Oeste on oboe. A 2011 SMF alum who teaches at Penn State, Oeste replaced faculty member Toyin Spellman-Diaz, who had to bow out at the last minute. 

As theatergoers know, last-minute changes can be disappointing but replacements are frequently more motivated than those originally scheduled to perform. 

Before she canceled, Spellman-Diaz dispelled any notion that this year’s SMF was short on star power. 

“I think it’s pretty star-studded,” she said in an interview. “You’ve got Jeffrey Scott, a founding member of Imani Winds, a Grammy-winning quartet. (Spellman-Diaz is also a member.) There’s no brighter star than Jasmin Choi on flute, and there’s conductor Nicholas McGegan.” 

Scott and fellow Imani Winds member Valerie Coleman are among the SMF faculty members who will perform at the June 12 concert, “Tchaikovsky, Ravel, & Dvořák.” It takes place at Holley Hall, which has mostly general admission seating. (Note to self: Arrive early to get a good seat.) 

Those who want to see Choi and McGegan should attend the SMF closing night concert on Saturday, June 13, at the Sarasota Opera House. 

Called “The Masters in Concert,” it features Franz Schubert’s “Overture in the Italian Style,” Mozart’s Flute Concerto No. 2 with Choi and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. Violinist Alexander Kerr will also perform.

The SMF's public concerts kick off Friday, June 6, with “Beethoven & Mendelssohn.” The concert includes faculty members Stepansky (cello), Peter Kolkay (bassoon), David Bowlin (violin) and Teng Li (viola). Despite its title highlighting male masters, the program also features works by two female composers — Florence Price’s “Adoration” and Amy Beach’s Piano Quintet. 

As in any educational environment, Spellman-Diaz says it’s hard to strike a balance between SMF faculty members who are great performers and those who are effective teachers. Spellman-Diaz was involved in planning for this year’s festival, which she says will be more reponsive to student needs than ever. 

“I’ve had fellows tell me that they learn more in a couple of weeks at the Sarasota Music Festival than they do all year in school,” she says. “That’s what it’s all about.”