This just in from the Associated Press:

NEW YORK - At the upcoming Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Mozart will share the spotlight with other old masters and living artists from Finland to the South Pacific.

Peter Sellars is to direct Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho's new work, "Passion de Simone." Soprano Dawn Upshaw (who champions Saariaho and who performed in Madison with the Madison Symphony Orchestra this season) has the title role as French philosopher Simone Weil, who died of tuberculosis in 1943 as a member of the anti-Nazi resistance.

The festival's 42nd season, running July 29 to Aug. 23, encompasses 60 events, including orchestral and chamber concerts, recitals, dance, film, lectures and video art installations.

The July 29 opening concert is to be conducted by the festival's music director, Louis Langree, featuring Mostly Mozart's first Mahler, "Das Lied von der Erde" ("The Song of the Earth") for two singers and orchestra, and Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor.)

Even if you can't be there in person, the festival's opening concert is usually televised on PBS.

Langree also will lead the Aug. 23 performance of Richard Strauss's "Metamorphoses" for 23 solo strings and Mozart's Mass in C minor.

Another Saariaho work, "Terra Memoria," is to be performed by the Grammy-winning Emerson String Quartet (which has performed in Madison many times at the Wisconsin Union Theater) as part of the festival's Finnish focus, which also will feature music by Jan Sibelius and Fredrik Lithander played by Finnish musicians.

The South Pacific is represented by choreographer Lemi Ponifasio, a native of the island of Samoa who has reinterpreted Mozart's "Requiem" as a dance incorporating the ancient rituals of a Samoan tribal chief. The work is to receive its U.S. premiere at the festival Aug. 6.

If you want more information, go on the Net to http://www.lincolncenter.org/

But what Art Talk really wants to know is:

What do you think of the Mostly Mozart festival programming for this summer?

Does it dilute the Mozart focus?

Or does it expand the focus in a laudable and contemporary way?

What composers and works would you like to see included?

Also, if you could start another music festival or single-composer festival in Madison - which seems a natural given the UW School of Music and so many music groups and venues in the city - which kind of music or which composer would you choose? (Remember the city already hosts the Madison Early Music Festival in the summer.)

I always think it would be great to do a string quartet festival headed up by the UW's Pro Arte String Quartet (it is pictured above and will turn 100 in a few years), the Ancora String Quartet, the two outreach quartets of the Madison Symphony Orchestra and others in the area including the Fine Arts Quartet in Milwaukee. (My second choice would be either a piano festival or an all-Bach festival.)

The string quartet repertoire is vast and lot of it remains relatively unknown but unquestionably superb.

Plus, I don't know of another string quartet festival while I do know of Bach and Beethoven festivals, and of piano and violin and song festivals, and the like.

A string quartet festival could be tied in to master classes in quartet and chamber music playing.

And Madison has just the right kind of intimate halls for chambe rmusic between the UW School of Music, the Wisconsin Union Theater, the First Unitarian Society and of course the Overture Center.

Anyway, what do you think of the idea of holding a string quartet festival in Madison?

What idea for a Madison music festival do you have?

Let Art Talk know.