Festival Season

Dear Friends and Music Lovers,

Since 1995 it has been our mission “to enrich people’s lives through the power of music”, this year our 30^th  festival celebrated Music in the Vineyards’ past while simultaneously looking ahead to our next era.

We launched our 30th Season at Frog’s Leap Winery, with Spring Ahead! featuring Beethoven’s Spring Sonata, Vivaldi’s Spring from the Four Seasons, and Aaron Copland’s masterpiece: Appalachian Spring.

Three fabulous string quartets joined us for one week apiece—the Miró, Pacifica, and the Isidore Quartets—and each one was featured in a Wednesday evening recital.

MITV has commissioned 9 new works in 30 years and we brought back four of our favorites, by Kevin Puts, Miguel del Águila, T.J. Cole, and Maria Schneider. We revisited two winery venues from our early years: Louis Martini Winery and Spottswoode Winery, both in St. Helena. At all 16 venues, we showed our exhibit of memorabilia from the last 30 years, including a photo archive and the MITV Trivia contest!

Our interactive Concert for the Community returned—at a reduced ticket price—and featured music by Vivaldi, Mozart and Bottesini, as well as a play-along of the Pachelbel Canon (Including you! Bring a kazoo.) The popular Not-So-Silent Cinema series returned to the Jarvis Conservatory, featuring four classic “silents” with newly composed music played by festival musicians.

Our series that drills down on a single subject, Music Illuminated, presented two events: Dmitri Shostakovich: A Life in String Quartets hosted by Michael Adams, featured the Miró Quartet; and An Evening of Music, Film and Comedy featuring short films and new music, by the Canellakis-Brown Duo.

We closed this milestone year with Esplêndido! – From Bach to Brazil – a dazzling celebration starring the multifaceted Brazilian musician, Clarice Assad in music by J.S. Bach, Antônio Carlos Jobim, and Astor Piazzolla.

Thank you for joining us in August as we raised our glasses to 30 years of music making in the Napa Valley. It was great celebrating with you!

See you next year!
Michael and Daria T. Adams,
Artistic Directors, Music in the Vineyards