Litton returns, with pop, jazz, comedy and 'Aida'

The Minnesota Orchestra's Sommerfest, scaled back this year from four weeks to three, will include orchestral music, family concerts, chamber music, pop, jazz and opera.

Conductor Andrew Litton returns for his seventh season as Sommerfest music director.

The series opens July 17 with an 11 a.m. coffee concert featuring music director Osmo Vänskä playing clarinet in Eight Pieces for Viola, Clarinet and Piano by Bruch.

That night, Litton conducts music by Johann Strauss and two popular Mozart works, the Concerto for Clarinet, with Burt Hara as soloist, and the Horn Concerto No. 4, featuring Michael Gast.

The festival ends Aug. 1 with a staged version of the Verdi opera "Aida," conducted by Litton and featuring soprano Latonia Moore and tenor Carl Tanner.

A family matinee at 2 p.m. on July 18 features Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf" in a "highly visual" performance created by Theatre de la Jeune Lune.

Beethoven goes all town and country on the opening weekend. Vänskä and the orchestra perform the composer's Second and Fifth symphonies and his "Egmont" overture July 18 in Minneapolis and the next day at 2 p.m. at Winona Middle School in Winona.

Jazz meets classical in "The Art of Passion" on July 23, a four-movement work commissioned by the orchestra and featuring the Irvin Mayfield Quintet.

Litton showcases his piano skills July 24 in a performance of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," and a July 26 chamber concert featuring Fauré's Piano Quintet No. 2.

The bicentennial of Mendelssohn's birth is marked July 31 in a concert that includes his Symphony No. 4 ("Italian") and the Piano Concerto No. 1. St. Paul native Andrew Staupe, winner of the 2006 WAMSO Young Artist Competition, is the guest in the concerto. An even younger guest soloist, 14-year-old violinist Chad Hoopes, makes his Orchestra Hall debut July 25 in Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons."

Guest spots by the Smothers Brothers (July 26) and the Five Browns (July 30) are also on the schedule.

Claude Peck • 612-673-7977