Castleton launches jazz program

The Castleton Festival, the summer music festival launched by the late conductor Lorin Maazel at his estate in Rappahannock County in the northwestern Virginia highlands, will add jazz education and programming next summer, with the launching of a new Jazz at Lincoln Center Summer Jazz Academy.

The academy, planning for which began earlier this year when Maazel met with Wynton Marsalis, managing and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, will offer rigorous instruction from members of the New York-based jazz orchestra for 42 high-school-age students (grades 9-12) from around the world.

“It has long been our vision for Castleton to evolve for the shared joy and benefit of young performers and Virginia’s arts community, so it is a special honor to share the Castleton spirit with young people focused on jazz through the work of Wynton Marsalis, an artist whom my husband regarded with such an admiration and affection,” Dietlinde Turban Maazel, the conductor’s widow and successor as artistic director of the Castleton Festival, said a prepared statement. “When we heard [Marsalis] was looking for a location for his summer program, we knew it had to be at Castleton.”

The jazz academy will extend by two weeks the 2015 season of the Castleton Festival. Its opera, orchestral and chamber-music performances will run from June 27 to July 19; jazz concerts will be presented through Aug. 2.

Programming for the 2015 season will be announced early next year.

For more information about the festival, visit its website: www.castletonfestival.org