Valley of the Moon Music Festival Sets 2017 Season

Valley of the Moon Music Festival founders, cellist Tanya Tomkins and fortepianist Eric Zivian, today announced the program for their 2017 Season, which will begin with a series of three concerts at the Green Music Center's Schroeder Hall at Sonoma State University.

The Summer Festival will take place over three consecutive weekends, July 16 - 30 at the Hanna Center in Sonoma.

The season features leaders within the field of historical performance practice alongside emerging talents and young professionals coached in the Festival's Apprenticeship Program. Valley of the Moon Music Festival is the first and only organization in the U.S. devoted exclusively to presenting the chamber music of the Classical and Romantic eras, performed on instruments built when the music was written.

The Festival's 2017 Season begins on February 11 with a concert featuring Catherine Manson on violin and viola. Manson, a member of the London Haydn Quartet and Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, is considered one of the most accomplished period instrumentalists of her generation, with critically acclaimed recordings of Haydn, Bach and Buxtehude. For the concert on the 11th, she will be joined by clarinetist and Festival Faculty Artist Eric Hoeprich, as well as Tomkins and Zivian, in a program including Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and Clarinet Trio, Op. 11; Mozart's Kegelstatt Trio for clarinet, viola and piano; and Haydn's Piano Trio H. XV:23.

The concert on March 4 will feature internationally renowned lyric tenor Nicholas Phan, accompanied by Zivian on fortepiano, in a program of Schubert's lieder. Phan, a San Francisco native, has received exuberant praise for his intelligence, stage presence and natural musicianship. Next year he will make appearances at Carnegie Hall in New York, Wigmore Hall in London, and the Hong Kong Culture Centre. The March 4th concert will also feature Schubert's Cello Quintet performed by violinists Nora Chastain and Christopher Whitley, violist Jodi Levitz, and cellists Jean-Michel Fonteneau and Tomkins.

Capping next year's concert series at the Green Music Center is a program devoted to Brahms on May 13. Boston-based contralto Emily Marvosh will take the stage alongside Levitz and Zivian in Brahms' Two Songs for alto, viola and piano. Marvosh has been a frequent soloist with the Handel and Haydn Society under the direction of Harry Christophers, earning raves for her "rich, clear contralto" (Washington Post), "dark, caramel voice...and fiery power" (Boston Classical Review). Also on the program is Brahms' Horn Trio featuring Sadie Glass on the natural horn, Ian Swensen on violin and Zivian on fortepiano. The concert concludes with Brahms' Piano Quartet in G Minor with violinist Bettina Mussumeli joining Levitz, Tomkins and Zivian.

The theme of next year's Summer Festival will be "Schumann and his Era," exploring the world of Schumann as composer, literary enthusiast and music critic, and featuring works by the many composers he idolized and championed. Additional details will be announced early next year.

"The goal of our festival is to help bring to light the radical difference of this repertoire - Classical and Romantic music - when played on the instruments for which it was written," explained Tomkins in an interview with EMAg: The Magazine of Early Music America.

Tickets for Valley of the Moon Music Festival's winter concerts are now on sale at the Green Music Center box office, available online at gmc.sonoma.edu/VOTM or by phone at 866-955-6040. Each concert starts at 3 p.m. inside the intimate 240-seat Schroeder Hall. Individual tickets are $30 each. Tickets for the summer festival, which are $40 for single concerts, will go on sale in the spring. For more information visit valleyofthemoonmusicfestival.org.

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