For eleven days every August, the Sunriver Music Festival turns our forested resort community into one of the Pacific Northwest’s great small classical stages. The 2026 festival — the 49th season — runs August 10–20, opening in Sunriver Resort’s historic Great Hall and closing at the Tower Theatre in downtown Bend, with world-class orchestra musicians under Artistic Director & Conductor Brett Mitchell.
We’ll be honest: the first time we walked into the Great Hall for a concert, we spent the opening minutes staring at the ceiling instead of the stage. A full orchestra inside a soaring log-and-stone lodge, golden light on massive beams, the sound wrapping around you from ten feet away — it’s the kind of night that makes you grateful you live here.
This guide covers the 49th season in detail, but bookmark it for any year — the shape of festival week (Great Hall opener, Tower finale, one unmissable pops night) is a Sunriver August tradition that only gets bigger from here.
Here’s our local’s guide to festival week: what’s playing, how the two venues differ, and the small moves that make the evening effortless.
What is the Sunriver Music Festival?
The Sunriver Music Festival is Central Oregon’s flagship classical music event — an annual August concert series, now in its 49th season, that brings professional orchestra musicians and acclaimed guest soloists to Sunriver and Bend. The 2026 festival presents four classical concerts, a John Williams pops night, and a family concert between August 10 and 20.
What makes it special isn’t just the caliber of playing — it’s the scale. This is chamber-close orchestral music: you can watch the concertmaster’s bowing, catch the wink between principals after a tricky passage, and hear the hall breathe in the rests. Big-city sound, small-town intimacy.
When and where do the concerts happen?
The 2026 festival runs August 10–20 across two venues: Sunriver Resort’s Great Hall — the log-and-stone landmark built in 1944 as the officers’ club for Camp Abbot, the wartime training base that became Sunriver — and the historic Tower Theatre on Wall Street in downtown Bend. Evening performances start at 7:30 p.m.
The Great Hall hosts the festival’s opening stretch, and the Tower Theatre carries the second week, including the pops and closing nights. Our take: do at least one of each if you can. The Great Hall is the atmosphere; the Tower’s art-deco marquee glowing over a post-concert Bend evening is its own kind of magic.
A word on the Great Hall itself, because it’s half the show: the building went up in 1944 as the officers’ club for Camp Abbot, the World War II combat-engineer training base that occupied this stretch of the Deschutes before Sunriver existed. Massive ponderosa logs, a river-rock fireplace you could stand in, and acoustics that turn a chamber orchestra warm and immediate. There’s no bad seat, but we like the middle rows — close enough to see fingerwork, far enough back for the sound to bloom under the beams.
What’s on the 2026 program?
The 49th season opened August 10 in the Great Hall with Joan Tower’s Made in America, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, and Haydn’s “Clock” Symphony, followed August 12 by William Grant Still’s Darker America, Barber’s Violin Concerto, and Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony. The Tower Theatre hosts the John Williams pops night (August 15), a program of Kevin Puts, Bach’s Brandenburg No. 3, and Mozart’s Symphony No. 39 (August 18), and the August 20 finale: Copland’s Appalachian Spring, Edgar Meyer’s Violin Concerto, and Schumann’s “Spring” Symphony.
This year’s guest artists include pianist Michelle Cann, violinists William Hagen and Tessa Lark, and baritone Timothy Jones — the kind of soloists you’d otherwise drive to Portland or Seattle to hear. As of this writing, the final two Tower Theatre concerts (August 18 and 20) are still ahead — if you’re in town this week, this is your window.
If you’re new to orchestral concerts, the pops night is the friendliest on-ramp — a theater full of people grinning at the first five notes of a John Williams score is about as unstuffy as classical music gets. And don’t sleep on the family concert; it’s short, playful, and designed for wiggly attention spans.
How do you get tickets?
Tickets and season details are at sunrivermusic.org or by phone at 541-593-1084. Single tickets and multi-concert packages are both offered; popular nights — the pops concert especially — regularly sell out, so book as early as you can.
If a program is sold out, it’s still worth calling about returns the day of the show. And mark the calendar habit locals swear by: the 50th-anniversary season arrives next August, and we’d expect it to be the hottest ticket in the festival’s history.
Two booking notes from experience. First, lodging: festival dates overlap Sunriver’s peak season, so vacation homes near the Resort and the Village go early — if you’re planning next year’s 50th-anniversary trip, lock the house before you lock the tickets. Second, weeknight concerts are the quiet insider move; the programs are just as strong as the weekend dates, and both dinner reservations and tickets come easier.
And if you’re weighing which night to choose for a first visit, our honest ranking: Great Hall classical for atmosphere, Tower pops for pure fun, the closing concert for the program — Copland’s Appalachian Spring in the high desert in late August is almost unfairly on-theme.
What should you know before you go?
Three local tips: arrive 20–30 minutes early (parking at the Resort is easy but the walk deserves unhurried time), bring a warm layer because high-desert evenings drop fast after sunset even in August, and make dinner a plan rather than an afterthought — pre-concert tables fill in both Sunriver and Bend on festival nights.
Our usual rhythm for a Great Hall night: early dinner in the Village (or picnic supplies from the Country Store), an unhurried stroll or bike-path cruise as the light goes golden, then music under the big beams. For Tower nights, we make it a full Bend evening. Events like this are also why August in Sunriver books out — see our family activities guide for filling the daylight hours, and Visit Bend’s event page for the wider week. New to the area? Start at our Guide to Sunriver homepage or the region-wide Guide to Central Oregon.
Why does this festival matter to Sunriver?
Beyond the music, the festival is one of Sunriver’s oldest community institutions — running since the late 1970s and supporting music education across Central Oregon, including scholarship programs for young regional musicians. Buying a ticket here isn’t just a night out; it quietly funds the next generation of players, as the Source Weekly’s season coverage notes.
It’s also, in our completely unbiased opinion, the single most civilized way to end a Sunriver summer day: sunburned kids finally quiet, a Haydn symphony winding up, and the smell of ponderosa drifting through the doors at intermission. See you at the Tower.
Sunriver Music Festival: Common Questions
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About Chance & Tianna
Team Homeward Found · Realty One Group Discovery
Chance and Tianna Jackson are a husband-and-wife real estate team serving Bend, Sunriver, Three Rivers, La Pine, Redmond, Prineville, Tumalo, and Sisters. Between military roots, marketing expertise, and years of investing in Central Oregon, they guide retirees, families, Veterans, and investors through buying, selling, and relocating with a level of care that only locals can offer.
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