Twin Cities-bred Broadway star Laura Osnes will make her first professional Minnesota performance in nearly a decade as part of the Minnesota Orchestra's Sommerfest.
The Eagan High School grad, who left town in 2007, will sing a Broadway revue July 10 with Santino Fontana, the University of Minnesota grad who was her "Cinderella" co-star on Broadway in 2013 and now has regular roles on the TV series "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" and "Shades of Blue."
This year's Sommerfest will offer 12 concerts over three weeks — five of them in the first weekend.
The annual summer festival opens July 8 with an eclectic program that includes Liszt, Copland, Saint-Saens and Ravel and that features the Minnesota debut of Chinese pianist Zhang Zuo.
There are two concerts on July 9: Pianist Andre Watts, an orchestra favorite, plays the Piano Concerto No. 2 by Edward MacDowell. Earlier that night, Sommerfest artistic director Andrew Litton conducts Rachmaninoff and Brahms.
July 10 is also a two-show day. Osnes and Fontana will sing an evening program (but not with the orchestra); Litton leads a chamber program of Poulenc, Miguel del Aguila and John Harbison in the afternoon.
Litton returns to Brahms with the composer's Double Concerto on July 14-15. Violinist Nicola Benedetti and cellist Leonard Elschenbroich are the soloists. Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and his 4th Symphony complete the program, each on successive nights.
Alec Wilder's Octets are served by a chamber grouping in the early show July 16, with the Beethoven Triple Concerto headlining the nightcap, again with Benedetti and Elschenbroich.
The orchestra takes the same program the following day to Winona, Minn., for the Minnesota Beethoven Festival.
The final weekend has a lighter Friday, as trumpeter Charles Lazarus brings his brass group in for "A Night in the Tropics" July 22, before the festival concludes the following night with Verdi's opera "Otello," in concert version.
For more information, call 612-371-5656 or go online to minnesotaorchestra.org.
Graydon Royce • 612-673-7299
