Stern Grove Festival Celebrates 75th Anniversary Season This Summer

Stern Grove Festival, the longest running admission-free outdoor music festival in the country, celebrates its 75th anniversary season June 24 – August 26, 2012. A beloved summer tradition in a magnificent natural setting as only California can provide, Stern Grove Festival showcases world class concerts by well-known performers as well as emerging innovative artists.

For 750 Sundays, music and dance has fillEd Stern Grove. The inaugural season began on July 10th, 1938, and included two performances by the San Francisco Symphony. Stern Grove Festival has evolved into an intrinsic member of California's arts community and today presents a season as diverse as the city it calls home. The San Francisco Symphony, which performed the first-ever concert at the Grove, will perform Beethoven's triumphant Symphony No. 9 led by Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas with members of the SFS Chorus and soloists as the orchestra celebrates its centennial season. To mark this milestone, KDFC will broadcast this July 8 concert live, further underscoring how performances at Stern Grove Festival are truly accessible to everyone.

The histories of Stern Grove and the San Francisco Symphony have been linked since June 19, 1932, when the sounds of Wagner's Overture to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg burst through the concert meadow as sixty members of the San Francisco Symphony performed the inaugural concert at Stern Grove. This was a benefit performance organized by Symphony Board Member Rosalie Meyer Stern to support musicians of the orchestra her husband Sigmund helped found in 1911.

More information online Stern Grove Festival, on Facebook or by calling (415) 252-6252.