Savannah Music Festival brings world-class performances to intimate venues. Here's what to expect

The 2024 Savannah Music Festival runs through April 13 at various venues in the city. The festival supports year-round educational programs and presents a wide variety of musical genres, including performances by soprano Renée Fleming, pianist Emanuel Ax, Rosanne Cash, Rebirth Brass Band and others.

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This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

TRANSCRIPT:

Pamela Kirkland: Joining me now to talk about the music and what festival goers can expect to hear this year are Savannah Music Festival executive director Gene Dobbs Bradford and artistic director Ryan McMaken. Thank you both so much for being here.

Gene Dobbs Bradford: Thank you for having us.

Pamela Kirkland: Gene, this is the 35th annual festival. Can you tell us about the vision behind this year's Savannah Music Festival and how it's evolved over the years?

Gene Dobbs Bradford: The festival is really unique in that it's a boutique festival that features music from many different genres. So not just jazz, but classical music and American roots music — which includes everything from bluegrass, blues, zydeco, Cajun music, Appalachian fiddle music. We also do international roots music, which we have groups coming in from Ireland, from Africa, from India, from all over the world to bring us their music. It's a world of music in one city.

Pamela Kirkland: The festival is obviously about coming and hearing some really great music, but there's also an educational component to it. Gene, can you talk a little bit about the arts education that's also part of the festival?

Gene Dobbs Bradford: That's right. We have year-round education and community engagement activities. Two main programs are our Jazz Academy program, where we have about 56 students. It's an afterschool program. They get together in small ensembles of six to eight, and they learn music through the lens of jazz, and they actually get masterclasses and Q&A sessions with some of the artists who actually perform on the festival, which is a great way to incorporate it. That's a year-round program. And then we also have our Musical Explorers program, which teaches kindergarten through second graders three different genres of music each semester, so that by the time they've gone from kindergarten to second grade, they'll [have] heard 18 different genres of music. And we do professional development with a curriculum that we've developed in conjunction with Carnegie Hall. And we hope that their appetite for different styles of music will grow.

Pamela Kirkland: Brian, I wanted to ask you about some of the iconic venues across Savannah's National Historic Landmark District. How do the venues contribute to the atmosphere and the overall experience that you have at the Savannah Music Festival?

Ryan McMaken: We work in 10 different venues throughout the historic districts. And a lot of these you're seeing the artist up-close-and-personal. You know, you have the venues from 175 seats up to 1,200, with the Lucas Theater for the Arts. So we have the Lucas Theater and Trustees Theater, both wonderful spaces. We've got 14 concerts over the 17 days in those two theaters. But also the Keyhoe Iron Works Building on the east side of the historic district or the Trinity United Methodist Church. They're all built out to suit the music that we're presenting in them. Some of them are not typically music venues — we use the Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum — so we have all these partners within the cultural scene of Savannah that we're fortunate to work with on this festival.

Pamela Kirkland: Gene, can you give us a rundown of some of the artists that you might be a little bit more familiar with that you're going to hear this year?

Gene Dobbs Bradford: Oh, well, absolutely. We've got, we've got one of the greatest sopranos ever: Renée Fleming is going to be kicking things off. Emanuel Ax, one of the foremost pianists, classical pianist. Rosanne Cash is going to be coming in. She's going to be performing with John Leventhal. And then, Matthew Whitaker — you may have seen him on 60 Minutes — a great keyboard player, jazz musician, just to give you a sample of the range of different acts that we have coming in.

Pamela Kirkland: It's a lot to look forward to. Gene and Ryan, thank you so much for coming on Morning Edition.

Gene Dobbs Bradford: Thank you so much for having us on. We really appreciate it.