The SFCV Summer Music Festival Guide, 2016
Napa Valley Chamber Music Festival | July 29 – Aug. 21
About 1.5 hours from San Francisco
In the Vineyards, literally. Venues include some of America’s greatest wineries as well as the refurbished Lincoln Theater. Now the festival’s 22nd season. This year: 19 days, 26 events.
Groups include four ensembles-in-residence to Music in the Vineyards: the Escher, Jupiter, and Ariel quartets and the San Francisco Piano Trio. Also, clarinet superstar Burt Hara of the L.A. Philharmonic plays Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet.
Other festival highlights include this years’ winner of the Irving M. Klein International Competition, 17-year-old cellist Oliver Herbert, who will play Debussy’s Cello Sonata at Frog’s Leap Winery. There is a lot of excitement buzzing around a new work by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Kevin Puts. His setting of W.B. Yeats poetry, In At The Eye, will be premiered at the picturesque Chimney Rock Winery. Silverado Winery is our home for three concerts featuring masterpieces by Haydn, Brahms, Smetana, Boccherini, and Schumann, with international viola soloist Paul Neubauer featured in Soul Garden by Derek Bermel.
The final week of the festival culminates with the complete quartets of Beethoven, performed in five concerts on successive days by the Ariel Quartet. Hosting these concerts will be guest commentator Nuvi Mehta, artistic director of the Ventura Music Festival.
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