Mendocino Music Festival Hits Final Notes with Beethoven's Ninth

For two weeks every July, the headlands town of Mendocino turns into a music town. The Mendocino Music Festival is in the final stretch of its 40th season right now, and if you have been meaning to get under that big white tent on the bluff, the clock is running.

This year's festival has been a sprawling, genre-hopping thing, more than two dozen concerts running from full orchestra to bluegrass, chamber music to jazz, big band to Americana. The through-line for the 40th season has been Beethoven, whose music keeps turning up across the program like a familiar face in a crowd.

And the festival is going out the way it should: big. On July 25, the closing night, the Festival Orchestra takes on Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the "Ode to Joy" — conducted by Allan Pollack. Closing a Beethoven season with the Ninth under the tent, with the ocean just beyond the canvas, is about as fitting a finale as anyone could write.

So consider this your nudge. The tent comes down soon, the musicians scatter back to wherever they came from, and Mendocino goes quiet again until next summer. If you can get to one of these last concerts, get to one.

Hats off to Allan Pollack and the Festival Orchestra for carrying the season home.