The San Diego Symphony has a new music director, and he's bringing a fresh buzz to jazz and classical music with this year's Hearing the Future festival. Rafael Payare has created such anticipation, in fact, that it's helped San Diego top Conde Nast Traveler's Best Places to Travel in January list.
Making this year's Hearing the Future especially exciting is composer/conductor and 2018 MacArthur Fellow and Genius Award recipient Matthew Aucoin's expert curation.
"[H]e’s programmed an eclectic range of performances, from Payare and his wife, cellist Alisa Weilerstein, to Sheila Jordan, a ninetysomething jazz vocalist returning to perform here for the first time in almost three decades," CN Traveler explains.
According to the San Diego Symphony website, "The festival will shine a spotlight on the music being made today -- from composers and performers who are still in high school, to a 90-year-old jazz master. The festival will also explore the way music from the past, from Haydn, Beethoven and Berlioz to the creators of African-American spirituals, engaged with the most urgent issues of their time."
CN Traveler also points to the Farmers Insurance Open, which runs Jan. 24–27, and the opening of a new 162-room hotel called the Guild, "a much-delayed rehab of the former Army-Navy building downtown dating back to the 1920s."
While it's not just the San Diego Symphony making home a national destination for culture in the new year, it's nice to see our music being recognized as some of America's finest.
Rutger Ansley Rosenborg has been an Associate Editor at NBC SoundDiego since 2016. Find out more here, or contact him here.
