Baroque Music Festival Returns for 45th Season, Honors Past Artistic Director

Jessica Peralta
16 hours ago
4 min read

Burton Karson founded the Corona del Mar festival 45 years ago, and this year’s edition celebrates his legacy. He died in March at 90 years old.

Pre-concert brass quintet and patrons at Sherman Gardens during the 2023 Baroque Music Festival. Photo courtesy of Baroque Music Festival/Jeanine Hill Photography

The annual festival helping keep Baroque-era European music alive in Orange County — Baroque Music Festival, Corona del Mar — returns for its 45th season this month and runs June 22-29. This year’s festival honors co-founder Burton Karson, who died at age 90 on March 26.

“Dr. Karson founded this terrific, small, community-oriented festival 45 years ago,” said Artistic Director Elizabeth Blumenstock, who took over his role after his retirement in 2010. “I feel that his design for the festival was beautifully conceived, and indeed, I have changed extremely little since becoming the artistic director in 2011.”

This season’s festival is Vivaldi-themed and called, “La Serenissima: Vivaldi for All Seasons.” The larger mission behind the festival is to offer affordable, high-quality, smaller-scale concerts with professional musicians presenting the 18th-century works in the way performers of the time would have played them. The Baroque-era music — from around 1600 to 1750 — is performed in venues in Corona del Mar and Newport Beach.

From left, Rev. Shane Scott-Hamblen, Burton Karson, Patrician Albers and Norris Battin at the a 2023 festival event. Photo courtesy of Baroque Music Festival/Jeanine Hill Photography

“Over the course of five concerts in eight days, the festival offers Baroque orchestral music with strings and winds, a wide variety of Baroque chamber music, and a final concert with orchestra and singers — quite a range,” said Blumenstock, who leads from violin all except the June 23 organ recital, which also features soprano and trumpet. “Two of our chamber concerts are performed in the beautiful Sherman Gardens in downtown Corona del Mar. Burton was a passionate music lover — and an impactful music professor — and wanted everyone to love it as much as he did. I am honored to continue his mission to bring the delights of Baroque music to our community.”

Blumenstock performs on a 17th-century Guarneri violin made in Cremona, Italy, in 1660 and loaned to her by the Philharmonia Baroque Period Instrument Trust.

Baroque Music Festival Artistic Director Elizabeth Blumenstock with her Guarneri violin, and Board President Wayne Norman. Photo courtesy of Baroque Music Festival/Jeanine Hill Photography

“We’re shining a spotlight (on) the music of the versatile and extraordinary Antonio Vivaldi this year, featuring two of his most popular works, ‘The Four Seasons’ and the ‘Gloria,’” she said. “There will also be several of his string concertos and chamber works, his well-known lute concerto, and two wonderful cantatas, one for soprano, and one for alto — and plenty of music by a multitude of other Baroque composers.”

John Thiessen of New York, who has served on faculty for The Juilliard School's Historical Performance department for the past 15 years, will be performing on trumpet at the festival. He became involved with the festival in 2004.

“Burton Karson approached me to play with the festival, and that June I played my first concerts in Corona del Mar, performing repertoire by Corelli, Purcell, Bach and Charpentier,” he said. “It was tremendous, and I am happy that Burton's gift to the community has continued to blossom … featuring great music played by wonderfully talented singers and instrumentalists.”

Wayne Norman, board president for the Baroque Music Festival, which is a nonprofit, said Karson was his music professor at Cal State Fullerton in the early 1980s and he knew him ever since.

“It was a labor of love,” Norman said of Karson helping launch the festival. “There was so much energy that he put into it and he did it for 30 years and … he created a community. I remember talking to Burton about that after he had retired, that he had built this community up of people that loved the music, loved coming together once a year. There are people I see once a year, it's kind of like Christmas for me where you see family at Christmas time.”

He said when Karson decided to retire, the board of directors decided to keep it going — attesting to what Karson had built.

PHOTO 1: Soloists Elizabeth Blumenstock and Jolianne Einem with the orchestra in 2024. PHOTO 2: Soloists, orchestra and chorus in concert in 2024. PHOTO 3: An indoor/outdoor concert at Sherman Gardens during the 2023 Baroque Music Festival. Photo courtesy of Baroque Music Festival/Jeanine Hill Photography

“The community you built around you says we're going to run with this and it's going to be a lasting legacy, that’s, I think, that's true success,” Norman said. “It shows the love of the person, the love of the organization and the mission. … I think the fact that we're still doing this 15 years after he stepped down is a sign of what he built and how much people wanted to hold on to that and keep that moving forward.”

Before his passing, the festival board created the Burton Karson Music Education Fund in June 2024 in honor of Karson. It supports a new education program offering Orange County school- and college-aged students Baroque music workshops, clinics and presentations. The program kicks off with a launch event on Oct. 12.

“And that's the legacy of Dr. Karson, because he loved to teach,” Norman said.