More than a festival…
A Movement
The Siletz Bay Music Festival shares extraordinary musical experiences on the Central Oregon Coast, creating an epicenter of cultural enrichment through uplifting, world-class concert music.
Beauty of Place & Artistry
Inextricably linked to the wild, magical beauty of Oregon’s rugged coastline and its diverse population, the festival welcomes and connects the community through thoughtfully designed programs that showcase a wide variety of international talent. Always maintaining the highest quality and often featuring celebrated, GRAMMY Award-winning artists, the festival ensures vibrancy, relevance, and excellence. It presents “a sonic rainbow of adventurous musical offerings in classical and contemporary chamber and symphonic music, Latin jazz and Native American motifs” (Oregon Coast Today), celebrating the many voices and styles that bring harmony to this region.
Accessible & Affordable
With concerts at five venues throughout the region and ticket tiers structured for affordability at various income levels, the festival ensures access for all. In addition to its inspiring chamber music and large ensemble performances, the festival offers free concerts each year as a gift to the community: one is a flagship chamber music program, showcasing the utmost brilliance of guest artists in an intimate setting, and the other is a fun outdoor concert that incorporates storytelling specifically tailored for kids, but is enjoyable for all ages! Committed to supporting music education, the festival received the Oregon Community Foundation’s coveted Studio to Schools grant to administer a 5-year music program in Lincoln City Schools. The success of that project precipitated the formation of a separate entity, Music Is Instrumental, to continue the important work of providing instruments and music education to students in the Lincoln County system.
Leadership & Programming
As of 2024, the festival has announced its new Artistic Director, international sensation Mei-Ting Sun, a pianist and professor at the Royal Academy of Music in London. As warm and friendly as his name might suggest, Sun brings fresh vitality and global perspective to the festival’s already inspiring programming while carrying on its important legacy of excellence and innovation in cross-cultural, multi-genre collaboration. Sun was a close protege and colleague of the visionary Conductor and Artistic Director Yaacov Bergman, who founded the Siletz Bay Music Festival in 2011. “Well-known for his collaborative and inclusive style, often combining diverse arts into multimedia projects” (The Oregonian), Bergman brought people together in community around immersive, engaging, and socially relevant new works.
These successes include:
My Words Are My Sword by Darius Wallace and Jasnam Daya Singh - an amalgamation of jazz, hip hop, and classic styles, words, and music as a direct response to the George Floyd murder and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement
Celilo Falls: We Were There by Nancy Ives with poetry by Ed Edmo and imagery by Joe Cantrell - a multi-media orchestral work that explores the geologic and human history of Celilo Falls, likely the oldest continuously inhabited community on the North American continent until 1957 when the construction of the Dalles Dam submerged the falls and nearby Indigeneous settlements
How Can You Own the Sky? A Symphonic Poem Honoring Native Wisdom by Ethan Gans-Morse, Tiziana DellaRovere, and Brent Florendo - a sonic storytelling of the more than 200 mile forced march of Native Americans from the Rogue Valley to the Coast (Siletz) Reservation
and many more outstanding and inspiring programs.
