The 2026 Sarasota Music Festival will have a new and reduced look that organizers hope will have an even bigger impact on the young musicians who train there, their faculty mentors and the audiences who attend concerts.
The closing of the Hyatt Regency Sarasota hotel, within walking distance of the festival’s home base at the Sarasota Orchestra’s Beatrice Friedman Symphony Center, precipitated a series of changes that have been discussed for years based on feedback from audiences and participants.
For most of its 61 years, the festival ran for three weeks and featured fellows (many of them college students or those just beginning their professional careers) and an international array of faculty members performing in nine to 12 concerts each June. For many years, the festival welcomed 60 fellows training with a rotating lineup of 40 faculty members.
This year’s event will be cut back to two weeks and feature just four concerts, but it will provide new opportunities for the young musicians to work more closely and side-by-side with their mentors. The festival has accepted 40 fellows and invited about 20 faculty members…