La Jolla SummerFest 2016

It's August, which means the La Jolla Music Society SummerFest is starting. Each summer, the month of August is crammed with performances at the Sherwood Auditorium in La Jolla. With construction of “The Conrad” coming along this is the last summer of Sherwood.

The La Jolla Music Society always brings in top talent and this year is no exception. The fest starts with a free concert in Ellen Browning Scripps Park on Wednesday, August 3, at 6:30 p.m. Ellen Browning Scripps Park is better known as La Jolla Cove.

The first of the festival concerts is on August 5 and is programmed around music from Bohemia. Completing the weekend is a concert of Schoenberg's Transfigured Night on Saturday and a concert entitled From Mozart to Mahler on Sunday.

The concerts that jumped out at me for this year were the two nights of Bach’s Cello Suites performed by Mischa Maisky on August 19 and 20. Maisky has been one of the great cellists on the world stage for decades. Complete performances of the Bach Cello Suites are rare and these concerts are maybe the best chance in a decade to hear them.

The suites will not be played in numerical order. Suites I, IV, and V are on the 19th, with III, II, and VI on the 20th.

More information on SummerFest can be found at the La Jolla Music Society website.