Pine Mountain Music Festival

About the Pine Mountain Music Festival

Now in its 27th season, The Pine Mountain Music Festival was founded in Iron Mountain, Michigan, in 1991 by Laura Jean Deming, a cellist and member of the Lyric Opera of Chicago. The festival runs in mid-June to early-July in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

PMMF is one of only a few summer festivals nationwide producing a season of professional opera, chamber, and jazz/folk music, and the only one that takes its acts on a multi-city tour. An avid champion of contemporary music, the festival has commissioned three operas: The Children of the Keweenaw, The Diaries of Adam and Eve, and Rockland; a string quartet: Oday Daywayigun; and a new play premiering this summer (2017) called The Beethoven Project. Educational components have always been an integral part of the festival, including the Orchestra Fellowship Program, the Resident Opera Artists Program, OPERAtion Imagination, and UPstarts! (for emerging young artists from the Upper Peninsula).

The Festival received the Governor’s Award for Arts and Culture in 1998 and the Great Lakes Community Arts Award from the Michigan Association of Community Arts Agencies in 2003. The Festival earned the first direct grant ever awarded to an Upper Peninsula arts organization by the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Festival is governed by a volunteer Board of Trustees and many outstanding volunteers. The festival’s Artistic Director and Conductor is Joel Neves, President-Elect of the College Orchestra Directors Association and Music Director of the Keweenaw Symphony Orchestra.