La Jolla Music Society SummerFest 2026 — 40th Anniversary

Coming Soon

16 Gathering

4,216 exploring this week · 1,087 upcoming in SoCal

La Jolla Music Society SummerFest 2026 — 40th Anniversary

Name: La Jolla Music Society SummerFest 2026 — 40th Anniversary
Start: 2026-07-31T13:00:00-07:00
End: 2026-08-29T16:00:00-07:00
Location: Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center, 7600 Fay Ave, La Jolla, CA 92037

Going? You can check in after it ends.

In 2 days · Fri, Jul 31 – Sat, Aug 29, 2026

Fri 1:00 PM PDT – Sat 4:00 PM PDT

Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center, 7600 Fay Ave, La Jolla, CA 92037

$40-$150

You found this. Be the first one here.

Join →

Tickets & More Info

Pickathon 2026 — Happy Valley, OR

Jul 30 · 8

Santigold — Humphreys Concerts by the Bay, San Diego

Jul 29 · 10

Lollapalooza 2026 — Chicago, IL

Jul 30 · 10

Sizzling Summer Nights 2026 — Free Latin Music at the Autry in Griffith Park

Jul 30 · 13

Padres vs. SF Giants

Jul 30 · 29

Otakon 2026 — Washington, DC

Jul 31 · 14

Otakon 2026

Jul 31 · 35

Newport Jazz Festival 2026 - Newport, RI

Jul 31 · 5

About

La Jolla's SummerFest turns 40 this summer, and the La Jolla Music Society is marking the occasion with four weeks of chamber music, jazz, world premieres, and free community programming at the Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center — one of the genuinely beautiful performance spaces built in the last decade anywhere in the American West.

SummerFest 2026 runs July 31 through August 29. The main concert series features more than 20 performances including Brad Mehldau's Ride Into the Sun — a reimagining of Elliott Smith songs with Chris Thile and Blake Mills that does not fit into any existing genre and is selling fast. Imani Winds performs Wayne Shorter's Terra Incognita during the second week. One marquee night moves to the Balboa Theatre in downtown San Diego for a program built around the American musical tradition.

The Conrad is at 7600 Fay Ave in the heart of La Jolla Village, a 10-minute walk from the water. Parking is available in the adjacent structure; street parking is possible but fills early on weekend nights. The venue seats roughly 500 in the main hall and is intimate enough that the third row and the twentieth row feel equally close to the stage.

The free programming is serious: open rehearsals, artist conversations, master classes, and youth performances run throughout all four weeks. If you want to understand what SummerFest actually is — a working music residency where internationally recognized artists collaborate and perform — the free open rehearsals are where you see it clearly.

Tickets for individual concerts went on sale May 4. The festival has sold out multiple nights in prior years. This is the 40th. Book early.

16 people have found this event.

Your audience is already here. See exactly who found you.

I'm the one behind this →

Or email us about this listing

Coming Soon

🌎 Nation's Best 19h away

Pickathon 2026 — Happy Valley, OR

Tomorrow · Jul 30 – Aug 2 Pendarvis Farm, Happy Valley, OR

The festival doesn't sell out by genre. Pickathon in Happy Valley, Oregon sells out because of what it is — a four-day experiment in how a music festival should work, in a forest, with intentional design in every detail. Pickathon is a forest festival in the most literal sense — stages are built into clearings, under canopies, beside creeks. The capacity is intentionally capped around 5,000 people. At other festivals that number is a slow Tuesday. At Pickathon, it's the entire community. The result: no waiting in crowds, no missing the set you wanted, no feeling lost in a sea of strangers. Camping is on the farm — you wake up to birdsong and walk to morning sets before the afternoon lineup begins. Artists don't disappear backstage — they wander the grounds, participate in late-night acoustic sessions, and sometimes show up to each other's sets. Chance encounters between artists and attendees are Pickathon's most famous product. If you've been to a major music festival and felt like you were waiting in line at a theme park rather than experiencing live music — Pickathon is the correction. This is for the person who cares more about the set than the artist's follower count. It's for the music lover who wants to discover someone they've never heard of and tell everyone about it for a year. There are no VIP tiers. Everyone eats the same food, camps in the same fields, walks the same forest paths. If you need a hot shower and a backstage pass — this isn't your event. If you need none of those things, this might be your favorite four days of the year. Pickathon sells out, often before the lineup drops — buy early. The zero-waste policy is real: reusable cups and containers only, available on-site. Cell service is limited in the forested stages, intentionally. Bring a paper set list or download it before arrival. The drive from Portland is roughly 30 minutes; carpooling is strongly encouraged. Pack layers — Oregon July nights cool down significantly. Day passes exist but camping passes give you the full four-day experience that defines what Pickathon actually is. It's a counterargument to scale — and it wins the argument every year. The artists who have played Pickathon read like a who's who of the next decade of music. It is where careers get made in the most analog way possible: one stunned audience member telling another. July 30–August 2, 2026, at Pendarvis Farm, Happy Valley, Oregon. Day and 4-day passes available at pickathon.com.

Santigold — Humphreys Concerts by the Bay, San Diego

Coming Soon

10 Gathering

3h away

Santigold — Humphreys Concerts by the Bay, San Diego

Today · Jul 29 2241 Shelter Island Dr, San Diego,…

Some artists make you move before you understand what you are moving to. Santigold is one of them — a voice that sits at the intersection of dancehall, punk, new wave, and electronic music, refusing to pick a lane because lanes were never the point. On July 29, she brings that restless energy to one of San Diego's most intimate outdoor stages. Humphreys Concerts by the Bay is the venue where the harbor becomes part of the show. Yachts drift behind the stage while sailboats catch the last light. Santigold's live set transforms this bayside setting into something that feels like a block party on the edge of the Pacific — "Disparate Youth" and "L.E.S. Artistes" hit harder when you can feel the salt air. Troy Baker Sound provides support with dancehall-inflected production that sets the tone before the headliner arrives. General admission, standing-room-only. Doors open at 6:00 PM, show starts at 7:30 PM. Humphreys is a cashless venue at 2241 Shelter Island Drive. If you have been looking for a reason to spend a Tuesday night on Shelter Island — the bay is warmer at sunset than you remember.

Coming Soon

10 Gathering

🌎 Nation's Best 16h away

Lollapalooza 2026 — Chicago, IL

Tomorrow · Jul 30 – Aug 2 From $185 (1-day) / $439 (4-day) Grant Park, 331 E Randolph St, Chi…

Grant Park sits on the lakefront in the middle of downtown Chicago. For four days each late July, it holds 170 artists and 100,000 people per day, and the city becomes the backdrop. The Chicago skyline behind the main stage is not just scenery. It is the experience. You are in a park in the middle of a great city, watching great artists, with the lake to your east and skyscrapers to your north. The crowd — 100,000 people per day — is as mixed as the city itself: festival veterans, first-timers, locals who come every year, tourists who planned the trip around the lineup. The stages are spread across Grant Park with enough distance between them to make cross-stage discoveries feel intentional rather than accidental. Lollapalooza is worth it for anyone who wants festival quality with urban infrastructure. Hotels, restaurants, and transit are all walking distance. This is not a camping event — you sleep in a real bed and walk to the festival. For people who love the music but not the tent logistics, this is the formula. The trade-off: you pay Chicago prices for everything around it. Practical intel: 4-day passes are frequently sold out before June; buy as early as possible. Single-day tickets are the fallback. The Lolla app is essential for scheduling — with 8 stages running simultaneously, the grid is complex. Late afternoon sets in the middle of the day often surprise people more than the headliners. Bring sunscreen — Grant Park has minimal shade. The park closes at 10pm and the city keeps going; Chicago nightlife on festival weekend is exceptional. Grant Park, Chicago. July 30–August 2, 2026. Lollapalooza was founded in 1991 by Perry Farrell as a touring event before it found its permanent home in Chicago in 2005. The shift to Grant Park transformed it from a traveling circus into an institution with a specific identity. Today it is one of the only major American festivals where the headliners skew mainstream enough to bring your parents but the underbill is curated well enough to make the music credibly interesting. The mix works because the setting demands it.

Sizzling Summer Nights 2026 — Free Latin Music at the Autry in Griffith Park

Weekly

13 Gathering

Tomorrow

Sizzling Summer Nights 2026 — Free Latin Music at the Autry in Griffith Park

Every Thursday · Next Jul 30 Autry Museum of the American West,…

On Friday nights in the summer, the Autry Museum opens its courtyard and something happens that most museums would never allow: people start dancing. Sizzling Summer Nights is a free outdoor concert series at the Autry Museum of the American West in Griffith Park. The best salsa and Latin fusion bands in Los Angeles play live while families spread out across the courtyard. There is a separate dance floor for kids. Free dance lessons start early in the evening for anyone brave enough to try. Food trucks line the parking area. The sun sets over Griffith Park and the music keeps going. This is the kind of event that exists because someone at a museum decided that the building should come alive on Friday nights instead of sitting dark. No tickets. No reservations. No velvet ropes. You show up, you eat tacos from a truck, you dance badly with your children, and you drive home remembering why you live in Los Angeles. The series runs select Friday evenings through the summer at the Autry Museum, 4700 Western Heritage Way in Griffith Park. Gates open at 5:30pm. Music typically runs 6-9pm. Free admission. Free parking. Bring the whole family. The kids' dance floor is the best part — a separate space where small humans move with the kind of fearless joy that the rest of us spend the whole evening trying to recover.

Coming Soon

29 Gathering

Tomorrow

Padres vs. SF Giants

Tomorrow · Jul 30 – Aug 3 From $20 Petco Park, 100 Park Blvd, San Die…

There is a Bay Area transplant living three doors down from you in San Diego, and when the Giants come to town he wears the colors to Petco without apology - the right-field bleachers take on a whole different character during this series. This is the oldest rivalry in the NL West, thirty-plus years of two California clubs fighting over the same playoff real estate, playing each other more than any out-of-division opponent. Late July at Petco is the stadium in full summer mode: weeknight sold-outs, the NL West standings close enough that three games directly move the pennant picture. The Giants travel with one of the most geographically concentrated and loyal away fan bases in baseball, which gives the whole series an edge a divisional midweek set usually lacks. This one matters. Show up for it. The San Francisco Giants visit Petco Park on July 30.

Coming Soon

14 Gathering

🌎 Nation's Best Tomorrow

Otakon 2026 — Washington, DC

In 2 days · Jul 31 – Aug 2 Walter E. Washington Convention Ce…

It started as 300 fans in a Baltimore hotel in 1994, and it has been running the whole time since, without interruption - which is why the 30th anniversary in 2024, drawing 46,000 to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC, felt less like a convention and more like a reunion. Otakon has a character that separates it from every other major anime convention. The DC location pulls a concentrated East Coast fan base - people who follow seasonal anime, collect physical media, and can place any character in their franchise context - and the programming reflects that, getting into the craft of animation, voice acting, and manga creation at a level that assumes real expertise from the room. The Friday night concert is the kind of thing attendees plan their whole weekend around, and the cosplay photography in the convention center's glass architecture, with DC landmarks nearby, produces an aesthetic that exists nowhere else on the circuit. This is a convention for anime fans who want more than a dealers hall and autograph lines - who want to understand how the work they love gets made, in a room with tens of thousands of people who love it as specifically as they do. The programming depth rewards multiple days; single-day is worthwhile for a specific guest or the concert, but the experience compounds over the full weekend. A few things worth knowing: Washington DC hotels near the convention center fill quickly after the con is announced, so book early or look at Metro-accessible neighborhoods like Shaw or Mount Vernon Triangle. The Walter E. Washington Convention Center is enormous - the map is essential - and it photographs extremely well, which matters when many attendees arrive in cosplay. Badge pickup lines move fastest early Friday morning. This year's theme is Swords and Sorcery, so programming skews toward fantasy-genre anime and epic storytelling, timed well with current momentum around Dungeon Meshi, Frieren, and Witch Hat Atelier. Otakon is operated by Otakorp Inc., a registered non-profit - 'By Fans, For Fans' is legally true, not marketing copy - and weekend badges run about 110 dollars with concerts included, where a convention like Anime Expo upcharges those separately. What Otakon really measures is longevity: a community that self-organized, refused to be dismissed as niche, and built institutions that outlasted the people who started them. That's what cultural endurance looks like from the inside. Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington, DC. 2026.

Coming Soon

35 Gathering

Tomorrow

Otakon 2026

In 2 days · Jul 31 – Aug 2 Walter E. Washington Convention Ct…

Some of the people in this hall have not missed a summer since 1994 — since before the shows they came for were streaming, before anyone called it content, when a fan-run convention in a hotel was the only place the community existed in the flesh. Three decades later, the first-timer and the person who's been coming since the Clinton administration walk the same corridors, and that unbroken thread is the whole thing. It's one of the oldest fan-run cons in the country, and it still runs on devotion: cosplay built to museum detail, English-language premieres you can't see anywhere else, and evening concerts by Japanese musicians who play Otakon and nowhere else on the American tour. Twenty-five, thirty thousand people make the trip from every state — big enough to feel monumental, still small enough that the community recognizes its own face in the crowd. Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington DC — July 31 through August 2, 2026. Come for the premieres and the concerts; stay for the strange comfort of a room that has quietly kept itself together for thirty years.

Newport Jazz Festival 2026 - Newport, RI

Coming Soon

🌎 Nation's Best Tomorrow

Newport Jazz Festival 2026 - Newport, RI

In 2 days · Jul 31 – Aug 2 Fort Adams State Park, Newport, RI…

In 1954 jazz wasn't yet respectable, and someone put it on the water in Newport anyway. Seventy-two editions later, four stages spread through Fort Adams State Park against water views you will still be thinking about long after the music fades - collectors clutching programs they've kept for decades sitting on the grass next to first-timers who wandered in on a friend's word and left with a completely reorganized sense of what live music can do. Jazz here does not feel like a museum exhibit. Newport consistently books the artists pushing the music forward alongside the legends who defined it. There is no camping on-site, no re-entry, and no separation between the music and the water - you pack for the full day and you stay. The fact that this festival sells out with no pop crossover acts, no festival-season marketing blitz, and no sponsorship-driven brand activations is the entire quality signal. The market already answered whether it's worth it: 2026 tickets are sold out through the primary market, available only through fan-to-fan exchange on the DICE app. Weather at Newport is genuinely unpredictable - pack for 50 degrees and rain in the same bag as 90 and sun. The no-re-entry policy is real, so bring everything you need for a full day: a low chair or blanket for the lawn, sunscreen, layers, and food if you're budget-conscious. Use the Newport Jazz app for real-time stage maps and set times. Arrive early for popular sets; the main stage meadow fills quickly. Digital tickets via DICE only - no PDFs accepted. Gurney's Newport Resort is the closest hotel and books out months ahead. Since 1954 this festival has witnessed every evolution the music went through - bebop, fusion, neo-soul, experimental - and never stopped being relevant. Fort Adams, with water on three sides, is one of those accidental combinations of place and art that produces something greater than either element alone. It earns its place here for the same reason certain films earn a place in the canon: not because it is the loudest, but because it is the most correct. Tickets via DICE at newportjazz.org.

You found this before it happened.

That's not a coincidence.

La Jolla Music Society SummerFest 2026 — 40th Anniversary

Pickathon 2026 — Happy Valley, OR

Santigold — Humphreys Concerts by the Bay, San Diego

Lollapalooza 2026 — Chicago, IL

Sizzling Summer Nights 2026 — Free Latin Music at the Autry in Griffith Park

Padres vs. SF Giants

Otakon 2026 — Washington, DC

Otakon 2026

Newport Jazz Festival 2026 - Newport, RI

Heading out?

Leaving Falkor