Sounds of a Summer Night

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Jackson Hole, Wyo.: Paradise! The Grand Teton Music Festival is held in a region that offers white-water rafting, ballooning, fishing and hiking. And on the stage (inside a 65-ft.-high hall that seats 900) they have everything this year from Brahms' Requiem with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (all of them) to Cham-Ber Huang, "the Paganini of the harmonica." The festival director, Ling Tung, says, "Here the audience becomes part of us." I know I must be getting close to California.

Aptos, Calif.: And here I am, 85 miles south of San Francisco, where the Cabrillo Music Festival performs traditional (Scarlatti, Schubert) and modern (Virgil Thomson, John Cage) in any setting they can find, from the Santa Cruz campus to the mission of San Juan Bautista. The festival has to scrape along, but musicians—everyone from Keith Jarrett to Dave Brubeck to some symphony orchestra pros from the Bay Area—are happy to come for free housing and a small per diem. (Smaller even than my daily salary!) The 65 orchestra players in sports shirts look like the folks who wait on you in health-food restaurants. I guess that means it's time to come home. Will Terpsichore Travel pay gas mileage? Love, Ardys.