Valley of the Moon Music Festival

POSSIBILITY: Dvořák Miniatures, Mendelssohn Octet
2021-08-01 17:00 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Virtual
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Two concerts, livestream and in-person at Hanna Boys Center
Finally, we turn to youth and the future. With an abundance of optimism and inspired by the young Felix Mendelssohn’s inexhaustible energy, the Apprentice Quartet joins forces with TANK Trust Laureate and rising star violinist Rachell Wong, and other VMMF favorites, to perform Mendelssohn’s iconic Octet at an outdoor Sonoma venue. In the spirit of hope, VMMF wraps up a season of longing and reawakening, bringing audiences into a bright future full of new talent. The program will open with Dvořák’s charming Miniatures for two violins and viola.
Rachell Ellen Wong, violin
Bettina Mussumeli, violin
Jodi Levitz, viola
Tanya Tomkins, cello
Apprentice String Quartet

LIVE CONCERT! TRANSFORMATION: Rolla Duets & Beethoven Quartet
2021-07-31 17:00 - 19:00 | Hanna Boys Center, 17000 Arnold Dr, Sonoma, CA, 95476, United States
BUY TICKET 5:00pm BUY TICKET 7:00pm

Two concerts in-person at Hanna Boys Center
After the long period of illness and suffering in 2020-21, we turn to Beethoven’s masterpiece, the Heiliger Dankgesang Quartet, for comfort and inspiration. Written just two years before his death, after several years of emotional and physical struggle, Beethoven found himself well enough to compose again and grateful to be alive. He titled the third movement “Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der Lydischen Tonart.” This translates as “Song of Thanksgiving to the Deity from a convalescent, in the Lydian mode.” It is a profound and heartfelt prayer of thanks after his illness. The quartet is preceded by a delicious appetizer of Rolla Duets for violin and viola.
Bettina Mussumeli, violin
Jodi Levitz, viola
Apprentice String Quartet:
Kako Miura and Vivian Mayers, violin
Ramon Carrera-Martinez, viola
Drake Driscoll, cello

FULL VIRTUAL FESTIVAL SUBSCRIPTION

TRANSFORMATION: Rolla Duets & Beethoven Quartet
2021-07-31 17:00 - 18:00 | Virtual
Reserve virtual ticket
FULL FESTIVAL SUBSCRIPTION

Two concerts, livestream and in-person at Hanna Boys Center
After the long period of illness and suffering in 2020-21, we turn to Beethoven’s masterpiece, the Heiliger Dankgesang Quartet, for comfort and inspiration. Written just two years before his death, after several years of emotional and physical struggle, Beethoven found himself well enough to compose again and grateful to be alive. He titled the third movement “Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der Lydischen Tonart.” This translates as “Song of Thanksgiving to the Deity from a convalescent, in the Lydian mode.” It is a profound and heartfelt prayer of thanks after his illness. The quartet is preceded by a delicious appetizer of Rolla Duets for violin and viola.
Bettina Mussumeli, violin
Jodi Levitz, viola
Apprentice String Quartet:
Kako Miura and Vivian Mayers, violin
Ramon Carrera-Martinez, viola
Drake Driscoll, cello

BLATTNER LECTURE SERIES: Conversations with Kate
2021-07-31 11:00 - 12:30 | Virtual
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Blattner Series Lecture and Zoom chat with Kate van Orden, bassoonist and Harvard University’s Dwight P. Robinson Jr. Professor of Music

Love and Longing
The festival theme beautifully captures the essence of Romanticism, both the Endless Longing from which any True Romantic necessarily suffered and the dark, unsettled quality of the music. In this year’s final talk, Kate van Orden discusses the nineteenth-century cult of emotion, the musicians, poets, and artists who lived by it, and how it was that music became a model for all the arts and Romanticism itself an infinite striving toward the unattainable.

VMMF free Kids & Family Concert
2021-07-31 09:30 - 10:15 | Hanna Boys Center, 17000 Arnold Dr, Sonoma, CA, 95476, United States
Performers:
TANK Trust Laureates, Rachell Ellen Wong & Andrew Gonzalez
Apprentice, Ramón Carrero-Martínez.

Join us for the first-ever Valley of the Moon Music Festival free Kids and Family Concert on the Hanna Center Auditorium Patio Saturday, July 31st from 9:30-10:30 am! Hear wonderful music from our fantastic emerging young artists, ask questions and get a close-up view of the musical instruments. Whether you are 4 or 84, this Concert will be fun for the whole family and a great introduction to music of all kinds. You will leave the Concert in a good mood, with a little more knowledge and a popsicle in hand!
No need to RSVP- just show up with your children and enjoy the show.

¡Acompáñenos al primer concierto del Festival de Música del Valle de la Lunagratis para Familias y Niños en el patio del auditorio de Hanna Center Auditorium el sábado, 31 de julio de 9:30-10:30 am! Escuche maravillosa música de nuestros fantásticos jóvenes artistas emergentes, haga preguntas y observe de cerca los instrumentos musicales. Ya sea que usted tenga 4 o 84 años, este concierto será divertido para toda la familia y una gran introducción a la música de todo tipo. ¡Todos saldrán del concierto de muy buen humor, con algo más de conocimiento musical y un nieve en la mano!
No es necesario confirmar la asistencia – solo llegué con sus niños y disfruté el show.

LES SENTIMENTS: Fauré Piano Quartet & French Songs
2021-07-29 18:00 - 19:00 | Virtual
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The French, known for their rebellion and individuality since the time of Rameau, produced some of Classical music’s most unique voices, such as Berlioz and Debussy, both featured on this program. The concert’s main course is Fauré’s Piano Quartet. Fauré’s bold experiments with tonality foreshadowed the Impressionist music of Debussy and Ravel. The concert also includes French art songs by Bizet, Debussy, and others.
Emily Marvosh, contralto
Lisa Lee, violin
Liana Bérubé, viola
Tanya Tomkins, cello
Eric Zivian, piano
Pre-recorded concert + Zoom reception with Festival Musicians!

BLATTNER LECTURE SERIES: Carlo Caballero
2021-07-29 11:00 - 12:00 | Virtual
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The Mysteries of Gabriel Fauré Concert: Les Sentiments
>> Meet Carlo at the July 29th post-concert Zoom reception.
Carlo Caballero is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he holds the title Erma Mantey Faculty Fellow. He has received fellowships from the American Philosophical Society and the Stanford Humanities Center. He earned his B.A. in music from Pomona College, and his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Fauré Studies, co-edited with Stephen Rumph for Cambridge University Press, was just released in April 2021. He is also the author of Fauré and French Musical Aesthetics and has published essays in Victorian Studies, 19th-Century Music, The Journal of the American Musicological Society, and many edited collections. His new critical edition of Fauré’s two piano quintets for The Complete Works of Gabriel Fauré is slated for publication by Bärenreiter-Verlag later in 2021. His current projects include studies of social continuities in French music from the 18th to the 20th centuries, the historiography of 19th-century ballet, and a second monograph on Fauré.

LIVE CONCERT! CONNECTING: 2021 Apprentice Performance - Schubert & Weber
2021-07-25 17:00 - 19:00 | Hanna Boys Center, 17000 Arnold Dr, Sonoma, CA, 95476, United States
BUY TICKET 5:00pm BUY TICKET 7:00pm
Two concerts in person at Hanna Boys Center
This year, with all safety protocols in place, VMMF was determined to connect in person with all five of our Apprentices. From New Haven, New York, and Montreal, these five extraordinary young musicians come together for the first time in beautiful Sonoma – forming new friendships, working with new mentors, and learning a fresh approach to chamber music on historical instruments. In this concert we enjoy the fruits of their labor in Schubert’s Grand Duo for violin and piano, and in a rarely heard gem by Carl Maria von Weber, one of the most important pioneers of Romanticism. Both of these pieces were written during the composers’ early 20s, around the same age as the young performers in this concert.
Kako Miura and Vivian Mayers, violin
Ramón Carrera-Martínez, viola
Drake Driscoll, cello
Suren Barry, fortepiano

FULL VIRTUAL FESTIVAL SUBSCRIPTION

CONNECTING: 2021 Apprentice Performance - Schubert & Weber
2021-07-25 17:00 - 18:00 | Virtual
Reserve virtual ticket
FULL FESTIVAL SUBSCRIPTION

This year, with all safety protocols in place, VMMF was determined to connect in person with all five of our Apprentices. From New Haven, New York, and Montreal, these five extraordinary young musicians come together for the first time in beautiful Sonoma – forming new friendships, working with new mentors, and learning a fresh approach to chamber music on historical instruments. In this concert we enjoy the fruits of their labor in Schubert’s Grand Duo for violin and piano, and in a rarely heard gem by Carl Maria von Weber, one of the most important pioneers of Romanticism. Both of these pieces were written during the composers’ early 20s, around the same age as the young performers in this concert.
Kako Miura and Vivian Mayers, violin
Ramón Carrera-Martínez, viola
Drake Driscoll, cello

LIVE CONCERT! FRIENDSHIP: Clara Schumann Trio, Fanny Mendelssohn & Louise Farrenc
2021-07-24 17:00 - 19:00 | Hanna Boys Center, 17000 Arnold Dr, Sonoma, CA, 95476, United States
BUY TICKET 5:00pm BUY TICKET 7:00pm
Two concerts in person at Hanna Boys Center
In this concert VMMF takes a look back at our successful 5th season in Sonoma: The Salonnieres: Women of Power and Influence, bringing back some the leading women composer/performers of the Romantic era. Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel were very close to their husband and brother, respectively. Love was at the core of these relationships, but they were not without competitive strain. Due to the sexism of their time, these women were prevented from achieving the full success they deserved. This concert brings their original voices to the fore. Like Clara, French composer Louise Farrenc also enjoyed a career of concertizing as a pianist, and together with her husband Aristide Farrenc, started one of France’s most successful publishing houses.
Rachell Ellen Wong, violin
Tanya Tomkins, cello
Eric Zivian, piano

FULL FESTIVAL VIRTUAL SUBSCRIPTION

FRIENDSHIP: Clara Schumann Trio, Fanny Mendelssohn & Louise Farrenc
2021-07-24 17:00 - 18:00 | Virtual
Reserve virtual ticket FULL FESTIVAL SUBSCRIPTION
In this concert VMMF takes a look back at our successful 5th season in Sonoma: The Salonnieres: Women of Power and Influence, bringing back some the leading women composer/performers of the Romantic era. Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel were very close to their husband and brother, respectively. Love was at the core of these relationships, but they were not without competitive strain. Due to the sexism of their time, these women were prevented from achieving the full success they deserved. This concert brings their original voices to the fore. Like Clara, French composer Louise Farrenc also enjoyed a career of concertizing as a pianist, and together with her husband Aristide Farrenc, started one of France’s most successful publishing houses.
Rachell Ellen Wong, violin
Tanya Tomkins, cello
Eric Zivian, piano

BLATTNER LECTURE SERIES: Imagining Friendships
2021-07-24 11:00 | Virtual
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Blattner Series Lecture and Zoom chat with Heather Hadlock, Associate Professor of Musicology, Stanford University.
Imagining Friendships
A “room of one’s own,” though necessary for creative work, can be a lonely place. Until the 20th century, isolation was a defining feature of a female composer’s experience. Each woman who composed and published her music in 19th century Europe tended to regard herself, and be celebrated or disparaged by her contemporaries, as the first and only woman with the talent, skill, and ambition to compose. They worked within masculine networks, typically beginning with musical fathers or brothers and extending outward to husbands, teachers, mentors, peers, students, and publishers. Even female composers who knew and appreciated each other, as Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel did for a few years in the 1840s, left scant traces of their relationship in letters and diaries.
This lecture will consider the overlapping lives of Schumann, Hensel, and Louise Farrenc, three brilliant and prolific pianist-composers of the Romantic era. What did they have in common? How did their creative lives and opportunities differ according to the city, class, and family each was born into? Where did their paths cross, and what did they know of each other? Above all, what might they have heard and appreciated in each others’ music?

COLLABORATION: Harry Burleigh, Dvorak & others
2021-07-22 18:00 - 19:00 | Virtual
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One advantage of post-pandemic remote programming is the sudden realization that musicians from all over the world can play for global audiences, without anyone having to leave their hometowns. In this concert we reach across great distances, geographically and historically. In a recital delivered to us from Boston by the incomparable baritone, Dashon Burton, in collaboration with two of VMMF’s East Coast pianists on a 1901 Steinway, we celebrate one of America’s great early 20th-century composers, Harry Burleigh, and his influence on a visiting colleague from afar, Antonín Dvořák. Burleigh, himself a baritone, composed art songs, and was also responsible for bringing the spiritual into the Classical song recital. While attending the National Conservatory of Music in New York in the 1890’s he made the acquaintance of Anton Dvořák, the school’s visiting President. Dvořák, struck by the power of the spirituals he learned from Burleigh, used some of the melodies in his own music. This concert will feature the music of Burleigh, Dvořák, Leoš Janáček and other influential composers of the period.
Dashon Burton, baritone
Renana Gutman, piano
Audrey Vardanega, piano

Virtual: Pre-recorded concert + zoom reception with Festival Musicians!

BLATTNER LECTURE SERIES: Alex Ross
2021-07-22 11:00 - 12:00 | Virtual
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In connection with VMMF’s concert “Collaboration,” The New Yorker music critic Alex Ross explores Dvořák’s interaction with African-American music, and particularly with the American composer and baritone Harry Burleigh. Burleigh’s meeting and ensuing friendship with Dvorak in New York had a lasting effect on Dvořák’s music, and subsequent Black composers found Dvořák to be a useful resource.
Alex Ross has been the music critic of The New Yorker since 1996. His first book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, published in 2007, won a National Book Critics Circle Award and the Guardian First Book Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. An essay collection, Listen to This, appeared in 2010. His third book, Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music, was published in 2020. Ross has received the George Peabody Medal, an Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship.

LOVE LETTER: Josephine Lang Songs
2021-07-21 18:00 - 18:30 | Virtual
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Award-winning duo, tenor Kyle Stegall and Music Director Eric Zivian, plumb the depths of little-known German composer Josephine Lang, in a brief but passionate selection of her songs on texts of love and longing. A friend of Clara Schumann and the Mendelssohns, Lang’s songs embody the emerging Romanticism in the mid-19th century.
Kyle Stegall, tenor
Eric Zivian, piano

MASTER CLASS: Rachel Barton Pine
2021-07-21 15:00 - 16:30 | Virtual
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ROMANCE: Clara Schumann Romances, Mozart Concerto & German Songs
2021-07-18 16:00 - 17:00 | Virtual
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In Mozart’s time, musicians were accustomed to arranging orchestral music for smaller groups of musicians to play in their own homes. Similarly, during the pandemic, musicians have had to find inventive ways to share their art. In this concert, pianist Apprentice Suren Barry follows in that tradition, transcribing and performing one of the great Mozart Piano Concertos in a version for keyboard and string quartet, recorded in the VMMF Directors’ Berkeley living room. Rachel Barton Pine and Eric Zivian will collaborate from a distance in Clara Schumann’s exquisite Romances, completing this program that brings artists together in ways new and old.
Emily Marvosh, contralto
Featuring Rachel Barton Pine, violin and Suren Barry, piano
Elizabeth Blumenstock, Carla Moore, violins
Liana Bérubé, viola
Tanya Tomkins, cello
Virtual: Pre-recorded concert + Zoom reception with Festival Musicians!

LONGING: Mendelssohn Quartet & German Songs
2021-07-17 16:00 - 17:00 | Virtual
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Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in A Minor is one of the greatest masterpieces of all time, written when the composer was only 17. It was modeled on Beethoven’s own A minor quartet – to be featured later on the July 31 Concert – as well as on “Frage”, a romantic song by Mendelssohn himself. To round out the program, we will present a selection of songs on themes of longing and loss.
Emily Marvosh, contralto
Eric Zivian, fortepiano
VMMF Quartet:
Anna Presler, violin
Liana Bérubé, violin
Phyllis Kamrin, viola
Tanya Tomkins, cello

Virtual: Pre-recorded concert + Zoom reception with Festival Musicians!

LONG-DISTANCE LOVE: Brahms & Beethoven
2021-06-24 18:00 - 19:00 | Virtual
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Beethoven’s celebrated song cycle, “To the Distant Beloved”, is a classic paean to long-distance love. Brahms’ Liebeslieder Waltzes, for four singers and 4-hands piano, are among the most seductive music ever composed. We are delighted to celebrate the beginning of a return to normalcy with this virtual presentation of multiple singers, assembled in one space for the video recording!
Nikki Einfeld, soprano
Emily Marvosh, contralto
Kyle Stegall, tenor
Edward Nelson, baritone
Allegra Chapman and Eric Zivian, piano

Pre-recorded concert + Zoom reception with Festival Musicians!
