April 2025 — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Zen Edwards, Executive Director · cell (310) 227‐0539 · press@bmf-cdm.org
Baroque Music Festival, Corona del Mar invites you to experience a memorable musical journey to La Serenissima—the Baroque Venice of Antonio Vivaldi, June 22-29. Director-violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock, international soloists, and the 2025 Festival Orchestra & Chorus, bring the community vibrant, historically informed interpretations of The Four Seasons, Vivaldi’s delightful Gloria, and much more, in 5 concerts over 8 days.
NEWPORT BEACH—the Baroque Music Festival, Corona del Mar, Newport Beach’s longstanding series, and still the city’s only exclusively classical-music-performing professional arts organization, returns with a Vivaldi-Fest for its 45th Season, running June 22-29. A hugely enjoyable, as well as educational, boutique summer series is planned, of accessible, smaller-scale concerts. Specialist professional musicians present 18th-century masterpieces close to how their composers would have heard them, at beautiful venues in Corona del Mar and Newport Beach. The 45th Festival is dedicated to its founding artistic director, Dr. Burton Karson, who passed away aged 90 in late March. For 30 years from the first series in June 1981, Dr. Karson served as the organization’s artistic director, conductor, organizer, champion, muse, and creative force. His last Festival as director was in June 2010, but he continued to inspire the nonprofit organization’s leaders, and regularly attended the June Festival in subsequent years.
Internationally recognized Baroque violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock directs the 2025 Season, her 15th as artistic director, curating and leading all but one of the performances (the Monday, June 23 trumpet, soprano, and organ recital). Blumenstock’s busy schedule performing on the 17th-century Guarneri violin made in Cremona in 1660 and generously loaned to her by the Philharmonia Baroque Period Instrument Trust, takes her as an esteemed soloist and concertmaster from Göttingen in Germany to San Francisco, Houston, New York, and everywhere in between.
The 45th Festival—“La Serenissima: Vivaldi for All Seasons”—opens and closes with lavish Sunday afternoon concerts by the Festival Orchestra, joined for the Finale by the 8-voiced Festival Chorus. The opener, The Four Seasons, presents a wonderful opportunity, especially here in Southern California, to experience Blumenstock’s mercurial and historically-informed interpretation of the seminal concerto set—still musically radical today three centuries since its publication. Blumenstock recorded the concertos in 2010-11, but she rarely gets the chance to perform the set which is not often programmed by early music groups. She takes particular interest in having fun “painting” Vivaldi’s sonic portrayals of the four sonnets which inspired the works. (Are the sonnets by Vivaldi? We don’t know.) An interesting perspective, and the sonnets, are at: https://www.baroquemusic.org/vivaldiseasons.html
Featured artists give three evening concerts between the Sunday events. Monday’s Joys Celestial: Baroque Favorites recital highlights the excellent acoustics of St. Michael & All Angels Church, Corona del Mar, in a fitting tribute to Burton Karson, who often programmed trumpet and organ, and solo organ, recitals there when artistic director. Then, there are two concerts within the treasured oasis of Sherman Library & Gardens, a beloved venue since the first series in 1981. Musicians gather there on Wednesday and Friday evenings for A ‘Windy’ Night in the Gardens (wind chamber music by Vivaldi and others) and Classical Quartets & The Cellist’s Voice (Boccherini, Haydn, and Mozart string quartets in their socio-historic context), respectively.
The 45th series ends with the Finale: Vivaldi’s Gloria, a vocal program of secular and sacred music featuring two of Vivaldi’s feisty solo cantatas with international soloists Estelí Gomez and Cecilia Duarte, Lotti’s mesmerizing a cappella Crucifixus, the celebrated Gloria, and instrumental selections. See over for information/
Information and Tickets
In addition to the ticketed concerts, the Festival invites audiences to enjoy Baroque music al fresco by South Coast Brass, beginning 45 minutes before each concert. At all performances, audience members and musicians are encouraged to mingle for conversation and refreshment at complimentary “wine and waters” receptions.
- Subscriptions: $325 for all five concerts. Price includes reservable premium seating at each concert and a private catered post‐concert dinner following the Festival Finale on Sunday, June 29th.
- Single Tickets: Ranging from $45 to $55 for individual concerts, plus a $5 processing fee per order, for open seating.
- Students Go for Baroque Rush Tickets for Under-30s (age 12 and above): $10 on the day of performance only, cash preferred, with a valid student card and photo ID. Please email students@bmf-cdm.org for further information, and to inquire about group bookings and our open dress rehearsals for students. Exclusively for NMUSD families – thanks to generous support from the City of Newport Beach (Cultural Arts Grant), the adult accompanying any NMUSD student(s) age 12 or over is also eligible for the $10 rush ticket rate. Proof of enrollment at an NMUSD school is required to receive the discounted rate.
- How to purchase: Festival subscriptions, single tickets, and full venue information are at bmf-cdm.org or available by calling (949) 760‐7887 and leaving a message for a callback within 24 hours.
The Baroque Music Festival was founded in 1981 by Dr. Burton Karson (1934-2025), then Professor of Music at CSU Fullerton. The annual season of five June concerts is a high-quality musical experience and an accessible way to discover, or rediscover, the uplifting beauty and joy of Baroque-era European music (written from around 1600 to 1750), right in the heart of the local community. Over the past four decades, the Festival has evolved as an esteemed and popular cultural institution in Orange County. Performing on period instruments in intimate settings, acclaimed instrumentalists and vocalists gather each June in Corona del Mar and Newport Beach.
Concertgoers have described the performances as “rapturous” and “riveting”; reviews from the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Register, and others have praised the Festival throughout its long and illustrious history. The Festival Board of Directors remains committed to bringing inspirational Baroque music to Newport Beach every summer.
