ARTICLE: Decorated pianist to close out La Jolla festival he once watched from the crowd

August 11, 2026

Four decades after watching his mother and father perform at La Jolla’s inaugural SummerFest, east coast musician Jonathan Biss is closing the festival

From watching his mother take the stage from the audience at just six years old to closing out this year’s festival, Jonathan Biss has had a long-standing relationship with La Jolla Music Society’s annual SummerFest.

Biss is a Bloomington, Indiana-born pianist and the child of professional violinists Paul Biss and Miriam Fried. He first learned the piano as a child and later launched a musical career.

Jonathan’s accolades include receiving the Leonard Bernstein Award at the 2005 Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival in Germany, playing with the acclaimed Los Angeles and New York Philharmonic Orchestras, and being the first American musician selected to the United Kingdom-based BBC New Generation Artist program.

But before he played shows around the world and built a career of his own, Jonathan grew up in a family where music was second nature.

“Music is a language ultimately, and a language you hear from birth is a language you feel at home in,” Jonathan said. “So the fact that music was around my entire life was probably the most significant thing that ever happened to me. I was pretty obsessed with music from very early on, from even before the time I started playing, honestly. The longer I played, the more I could do … (and) the seriousness around it grew.”

In some ways, Jonathan’s affinity for music has grown adjacent to La Jolla Music Society’s SummerFest.

SummerFest, a four-week chamber music festival whose schedule includes 21 concerts and over 50 free community events this year, launched in 1986 and has remained since. Both of Jonathan’s parents played in the inaugural show.

“I have a visual memory of the concert hall and seeing my parents on stage,” Jonathan recalled. “At that point, it’s not a super defined one, but it is vaguely in there.”

That same year, he started playing piano. Twenty years later, he returned to the same venue for a SummerFest performance, but this time, on stage alongside Fried.

Calling the experience “a full circle moment,” he said, “When I came back in 2006 with my mother and we played together, I definitely had some sort of stored memory of that experience that came rushing back when I was suddenly in the same place with the same person again.”

That was far from the only time Jonathan and Fried performed together, as the two practiced together since Jonathan was young and played concerts at each other’s side across the globe.

“It’s been absolutely wonderful,” Fried said of seeing Jonathan’s growth as a musician. “I think Jonathan is a very special musician and very special pianist. It’s just absolutely wonderful to see how from a very talented kid he became a great artist.”

Also sharing the stage with Jonathan and Fried at the 2006 SummerFest was cellist Alisa Weilerstein, who has since become a SummerFest staple.

Weilerstein first attended the festival as a child and returned to perform there several times since. She described the 2006 show as “a really wonderful memory,” adding that seeing Jonathan — who she became friends with a handful of years before — and Fried share the stage was “really lovely.”

This year, Weilerstein kicked off the festival with an opening night performance. She returned for three other shows on Aug. 1, 2 and 5.

Jonathan will close the festival alongside a roster of musicians. The shows include a performance of “Schubertiade” on Wednesday, Aug. 26; “Conversation Across Centuries” on Friday, Aug. 28 and “Finale: Rule of Three” on Saturday, Aug. 29.

In honor of its 40th anniversary, the 2026 edition of SummerFest is billed as “Making History.” Learn more or purchase tickets for the remaining shows at theconrad.org/summerfest.