By Ted AYALA

Local residents looking to beat the summer heat and find great music making need look no further than the Huntington Gardens in San Marino beginning this month. Southwest Chamber Music, the Grammy Award-winning chamber music ensemble that has earned a worldwide reputation for its excellence and its collaborations with some of today’s foremost composers, begins the summer season on July 14 on the loggia of the Huntington Gardens.

A wide repertoire, ranging from Mozart and a rare chip from Wagner’s workbench to modern masterpieces by Oliver Knussen and Gabriela Ortíz, awaits audiences in a series of four concerts scheduled through July and August.

The first concert is set to begin July 14 at 7:30 p.m. with a program of Stravinsky, Knussen, and Mozart.

At the center of the program is British composer Knussen’s “Hums and Songs of Winnie the Pooh,” a product of the composer’s precocious teen years. Composed in 1970 (and revised 13 years later), it points forward to the composer’s subsequent explorations, via his operas based on Maurice Sendak stories, of the life of the child.

Flanking it is the brittle, neo-classical irony of Stravinsky’s 1920s “Octet for Winds” and the molten lyricism of Mozart’s “Gran Partita” serenade.

Tickets range from $28 to $65. For tickets and more information, go online to www.swmusic.org, or call (800) 726-7147.

  Ted Ayala