
Mainly Mozart Festival musicians perform on July 11, 2020 in a parking lot in Del Mar, California. Photo by J. Kat Woronowicz Johnson
“Mainly Mozart is gearing up for a big return to the Del Mar Fairgrounds, where it staged a series of groundbreaking 2020 drive-in concerts,” writes George Varga in Wednesday’s (1/6) San Diego Union-Tribune. “Mainly Mozart will kick off its even more ambitious 2021 Festival of Orchestras in February with four drive-in performances [and] will continue with drive-in concerts in April and June, when it hopes to shift to a car-free outdoor venue … and expand significantly adding performances in Orange County…. ‘People will either be socially distanced in cars or seated outdoors. There is zero chance we will go to an indoor venue in June,’ said Mainly Mozart CEO and co-founder Nancy Laturno. The February performances will showcase musicians from the Los Angeles Philharmonic and San Francisco Symphony. Most of those concerts will be conducted by violinist David Chan, the concertmaster of New York’s Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. The April concerts … will pair members of New York’s Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the Washington, D.C.-based National Symphony.” Separately, musicians from the San Diego Symphony and La Jolla Music Society will perform in four Del Mar drive-in concerts in February featuring Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra Septet.