Stern Grove Festival kicks off free summer concerts Sunday with Snarky Puppy
SAN FRANCISCO – The Stern Grove Festival will kick off its latest season of free concerts at San Francisco's Sigmund Stern Recreation Grove this Sunday.
The popular festival released its full schedule of summer concerts for its 86th season last April that includes blues guitar hero Buddy Guy, punk pioneer Patti Smith, modern psychedelic rockers the Flaming Lips and more.
The free festival concerts take place on Sunday afternoons during the summer starting June 18 and running through August 20. Jazz fusion band Snarky Puppy and guitarist Isaiah Sharkey will be the first performers of the summer this Sunday, though there are currently no available ticket reservations.
Tickets are free but limited and must be reserved in advance on Stern Grove's website. They are released one month prior to each show date at 2 p.m. The next available tickets will be released this Friday at 2 p.m. for Angelique Kidjo's July 16 performance.
This summer, CBS News Bay Area and KBCW is partnering with Stern Grove to broadcast and livestream some of the season's concerts, starting with the sold-out June 18 performance of Snarky Puppy.
The concerts will air on KBCW 44 Cable 12 and stream on the CBS News Bay Area website on Sundays from 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
The festival has overcome a series of hardships in recent years with the pandemic shutdown coming before catastrophic flooding from a burst water main in August of 2021 that led to the cancelation of that year's Big Picnic fundraiser with Tower of Power and Too $hort. Last month during one of the intense windstorms that plagued the Bay Area this year, a huge eucalyptus tree toppled onto the historic Trocadero Clubhouse in the Grove, severely damaging the landmark building.
"This is soul crushing. The Trocadero and Stern Grove are San Francisco treasures," said San Francisco Recreation and Park General manager Phil Ginsburg in a prepared statement. It will take political leadership, resources and community resolve to put the Trocadero back together again."
More information about the Stern Grove Festival is available at the festival website.