31st Annual

International Summer

Organ Festival—2018

Dream with us on Midsummer

Nights! Mondays at 7:30 p.m.

June 25 to September 3

JUNE 25—Raúl Prieto Ramírez, San Diego’s choice for Civic Organist in 2017, will offer a night of ab-solute virtuosity featuring some of his famous tran-scriptions that are driving the possibilities of the or-gan technique to the edge of the impossible. He will be performing the same program a week later to open the Mataro-Barcelona Summer Organ Festival, highlighting the opening musical nights for both summer Festivals in San Diego and in Barcelona.

JULY 2—Walt Strony, one of the nation’s leading concert organists who is at home with both pops and classical music, offers a night of patriotic music.

JULY 9—Alessandro Pittorino, who recently ob-tained a Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School, has performed at St. Patrick’s Cathedral NYC, The Cathedral of St. John the Divine NYC, Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA, and many more.

JULY 16—Adam J. Brakel, whose spell-binding and technically masterful performances have led to his being compared to Liszt, Gould, Bernstein, and Pa-ganini. He is the Director of Music at St. James Ca-thedral and for the Catholic Diocese of Orlando, Florida.

JULY 23—Bradley Hunter Welch, whose virtuosity combines with easygoing commentary to weave a spell of colors, darkness, and light as a “world-class virtuoso” (The American Organist). Dr. Welch is the 2003 First Prize winner of the Dallas International Organ Competition and serves as Artist-in-Residence at Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church, Dallas.

Walt Strony

Alessandro Pittorino

Adam J. Brakel

Bradley Hunter Welch

Raúl Prieto Ramírez

Free Concerts—Ample Seating

Reilly Xu

JULY 30—Chelsea Chen, organ, and Joseph Lee, Vio-loncello. Returning to her San Diego roots, Chelsea Chen is acknowledged as “An artist of great technical and dramatic skill… personable, humble and simply appears to be one with the instrument.” (Palm Beach Daily News). Joseph Lee is a beloved member of the New York City Ballet Orchestra and currently teaches at the Geneva Conservatory in Manhattan.

AUGUST 6—Ken Cowan, organ, and his wife, Lisa Shihoten, violin. Ken Cowan returns for a second con-secutive year to the Spreckels stage, thanks to his daz-zling artistry, impeccable technique and imaginative programming. He’s joined by chamber music virtuoso Lisa Shihoten, Juilliard-trained international performer and teacher.

AUGUST 13—”Rising Stars” night featuring twin brothers Reilly Xu and Bruce Xu, age 15. Reilly is currently studying in The Juilliard School’s Pre-College program, and Bruce is a rising junior at the high school program of University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

AUGUST 20—Movie Night with Steven Ball, Organist for Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, NJ. A scholar in the art of silent film composition and accompani-ment, he has traveled and performed extensively in both the United States and abroad including concerts in The Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France, Portugal, Ireland, England, Switzerland and Italy. He’ll play for the hilarious SAFETY LAST (1923), starring Harold Lloyd.

AUGUST 27—Maria Teresa Sierra, piano, and her hus-band, Raúl Prieto Ramírez, organ, performing as Duo MusArt, the leading piano and organ duo in the world with performances from Russia, Germany, Spain and the UK to the United States. They have been credited with bringing back the early 20th century piano and organ original repertoire as well as producing new transcriptions of popular music and commissions of new works by modern composers.

SEPTEMBER 3—ROCKING BALBOA PARK! Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin tribute with Raúl Prieto Ramírez on the organ, together with Daniel Crawford, guitar; Ariel Levine, guitar; and Richard Larson on drums for a Labor Day blowout.

WWW.SPRECKELSORGAN.ORG

Ken Cowan

and Lisa Shihoten

Steven Ball

Raúl with Maria Teresa Sierra

Chelsea Chen—Joseph Lee

Bruce Xu