Valley of the Moon Music Festival Announces 2016 Season Lineup

After a successful inaugural season, Valley of the Moon Music Festival has announced its program of concerts for 2016. Founded and directed by cellist Tanya Tomkins and fortepianist Eric Zivian, the nonprofit organization presents the first and only festival in the United States devoted entirely to Classical and Romantic music performed on period instruments. Next year's annual event returns to the Hanna Boys Center in Sonoma, July 16 to 31, and features a mix of established and emerging artists. Scheduled events include more than half a dozen concerts.

In addition, this winter, festival artists continue their residency at the Green Music Center at Sonoma State University with a trio of concerts from January 30 to March 5.

Valley of the Moon Music Festival aims to expand upon this year's event by showcasing the voice in 18th- and 19th-century chamber music. In addition to returning instrumentalists including Elizabeth Blumenstock, Eric Hoeprich and Monica Huggett, next year's roster of artists will feature soprano Nikki Einfeld and tenor Kyle Stegall. Both young vocalists have earned praise for their tone and expression -- "bright," "lithe" (San Francisco Chronicle), "lovely," and "ardent" (The New York Times). Performing works of Schubert, Schumann and Mendelssohn, they will be joined by other noted, up-and-coming musicians including Sadie Glass on the natural horn and violinist Holly Piccoli.

Additional artists in 2016 include Kati Kyme, violin and viola; Anthony Martin, viola; Carla Moore, violin; Marc Schachman, oboe; Michel Taddei, double bass; and Kate van Orden, bassoon. The Dwight P. Robinson Jr. Professor of Music at Harvard, van Orden will also deliver a mid-week lecture titled "Period Performance and the Politics of Resistance."

Blumenstock, Hoeprich and Huggett together with Tomkins and Zivian comprise the Festival's faculty artists. In addition to performing, they lead the Festival's Apprenticeship Program which next year will accept five advanced music students or young professional musicians. Apprentices in the program receive private coaching from faculty artists and numerous opportunities to perform.

"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 earlier this year with EMAg: The Magazine of Early Music America.

"Our first year was a wonderful success. One of the best things about it is we included apprentices from both the early music and modern worlds. We are finding that young musicians from both camps are very interested in this repertoire on original instruments. Whether they go on to careers as modern or period musicians, students benefit from hearing how different familiar pieces can sound when performed in an historically informed manner."

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/schroeder/valley-of-the-moon or by phone at 866-955-6040. Each concert will take place at the intimate 240-seat Schroeder Hall at the Green Music Center. Individual tickets are $30 each. Tickets for the summer festival, which are $40 for single concerts, will go on sale in the spring. Detailed program information for each of the 2016 concerts follows below. For more information visit valleyofthemoonmusicfestival.org.