Calendar

Ensemble Coaching is for pre-formed chamber ensembles, who will be coached by different Music in the Vineyards festival musicians each week. We welcome applications from experienced players seeking to refine their ensemble techniques with the help of an internationally renowned MITV musician.

Come and watch our musicians at work and play, including Q&A opportunities.

We launch our next 30 years 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.

MITV returns to the venue that hosted our very first concert! Anchoring this program is Brahms' late masterpiece for clarinet preceded by an MITV commission from 2005 by Miguel del Aguila: Salon de Buenos Aires is a nostalgic musical trip to 1950”s Buenos Aires, full of carefree Brazilian Sambas, melodramatic Tangos and maniacal Milongas.

Brahms and Beethoven masterworks bookend the remarkable piece by Maria Schneider--best known for big band jazz works--that we commissioned in 2014. Klein Competition winner, violist, Emad Zolfaghari is featured prominently in this concert, appearing in both Beethoven and Brahms’ works.

Dvorak's youthful love songs — Cypresses — are presented here alongside the spoken poetry that inspired them. Caroline Shaw's Microfictions is a set of six miniatures inspired by the surreal paintings of the quartet’s painterly namesake, Joan Miró. Debussy's revolutionary string quartet is the essence of French impressionism in music.

Ensemble Coaching is for pre-formed chamber ensembles, who will be coached by different Music in the Vineyards festival musicians each week. We welcome applications from experienced players seeking to refine their ensemble techniques with the help of an internationally renowned MITV musician.

Come and watch our musicians at work and play, including Q&A opportunities.

This concert explores how today's composers seek inspiration. Beethoven's quartet Op. 18 no. 6 was the inspiration for Caroline Shaw's Blueprint. Likewise, Christopher Theofanidis was inspired by Bach's 3rd Brandenburg Concerto, and wrote Muse for exactly the same instrumentation.

Our 3rd annual celebration of classic silent films is accompanied by newly composed music played by festival musicians, in the ideal venue, the Jarvis Conservatory theater. Buster Keaton's One Week is the hilarious story of a newlywed couple that orders a prefab house from the Sears Catalog that could allegedly be built in one week, while Mighty Like a Moose written by Charley Chase is routinely listed among the greatest of all silent comedy shorts.

Artistic Director Michael Adams, assisted by the Miro Quartet, surveys the life of Shostakovich, through the lens of his 15 string quartets, that chronicle the personal and political turmoil that he endured under the oppressive Soviet regime. The lecture demonstration is followed by wine, appetizers and musical conversation in a stunning private home.

A great program for Francophiles, major works by Ravel and Franck join a new work by Karol Beffa, who began life as a famous child actor in France.

Our Masterclass is an open event organized for students from the Napa Valley Youth Symphony and the Paulin Center for the Arts. Both individuals and pre-formed groups attending the event will be asked to share their repertoire with us prior to the masterclass. Artistic Director Michael Adams and our 2024 Fellowship String Quartet, the Cabaletta Quartet, will give both technical and personal advice and feedback to the young musicians. Come and hear Napa Valley’s finest young players.

Beginning with "Four Diversions" from 1930 by the Lithuanian born Louis Gruenberg (who died in Beverly Hills!), the Pacifica Quartet also plays the only work that the normally prolific Shostakovich wrote in 1936, as a tactic to avoid becoming a target of Stalin's purge of the intellectual class. Dvorak's signature American quartet rounds out the program.

Ensemble Coaching is for pre-formed chamber ensembles, who will be coached by different Music in the Vineyards festival musicians each week. We welcome applications from experienced players seeking to refine their ensemble techniques with the help of an internationally renowned MITV musician.

Come and watch our musicians at work and play, including Q&A opportunities.

A familiar duo to MITV audiences, Michael and Nick collaborate once again in this Music Illuminated presentation, featuring two new works by Michael, two short films by Nick, and the cello sonata of Rachmaninoff, a deeply expressive work that explores the depths of the cello's range.

This concert, on the lawn in front of historic Spottswoode, brings back one of our favorite commissioned works: T.J. Cole's Playtime explores the world through children's eyes, while Smetana's autobiographical string quartet brings us into his world circa 1875. Tchaikovsky's Souvenir — always an audience favorite — reflects the composer's fascination with Italy.

A new offering for our community, the Chamber Music Workshop is for accomplished adult enthusiasts, including higher-level high school and college students, who are interested in meeting others and playing in small ensembles. All individuals attending the event will be provided with ensemble music in advance. Michael Adams and our 2024 Fellowship String Quartet, the Cabaletta Quartet will be on hand to enlighten and assist. Workshop participants who purchase tickets for the Community Concert at 5pm will have reserved front row seating to take part in the Pachelbel play-along.

This fun concert begins with Mozart's iconic Eine Kleine, performed by the MITV Fellowship Quartet for 2024, the Cabaletta Quartet. Boccherini's Night Music is full of theatrical sound effects meant to conjure the eccentricities of Madrid, while Vivaldi's Concerto tries to showcase four virtuosic (and competing?) soloists! Make sure to bring an instrument and join us for a Play-along of Pachelbel's famous Canon.

Vienna in the time of Brahms and Korngold is our focus, beginning with Brahms' contribution to a sonata that was to be written by a committee of three friends. Erich Korngold stunned the world as a child prodigy and completed his brilliant piano quintet while still in his 20's in his hometown of Vienna. Holding their own here are the two finest women composers of the 19th century: Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn. Fanny was said to be as talented as her brother Felix, but their father forbade her a career in music. Her remarkable string quartet reveals how talented she truly was.

Winners of the 2022 Banff International String Quartet Competition and a 2023 Avery Fisher Career Grant, the young Isidore String Quartet has quickly become the group everyone is talking about! This program is ideal for connoisseurs and novices alike, with two masterworks by Mozart and Mendelssohn, and Barber's gorgeous Adagio as the icing on the cake.

Ensemble Coaching is for pre-formed chamber ensembles, who will be coached by different Music in the Vineyards festival musicians each week. We welcome applications from experienced players seeking to refine their ensemble techniques with the help of an internationally renowned MITV musician.

Come and watch our musicians at work and play, including Q&A opportunities.

Pulitzer Prizes have gone to Kevin Puts (2012) and Aaron J. Kernis (1998) and MITV has commissioned works from them both! Kevin's In At The Eye (2016) is a set six love songs set to William Butler Yeats poetry. Aaron's single movement for string quartet is a beautiful elegy to loss. We end with a piano quartet, the genre that Mozart "invented" with his Piano Quartet in G minor.

Johannes Brahms wrote his two songs Op. 91 as a gift for a close friend, a violist, and his wife, a singer. We conclude with more Brahms, his great piano quintet. Beethoven's early string trios, written before any string quartets, were considered his finest chamber music to date, requiring great virtuosity from all three players.

Music in the Vineyards 30th Anniversary Celebration promises an exquisite evening of music, dining, and festivities. Our Festival Finale features the multi-faceted musician Clarice Assad, the Brazilian-American composer, pianist, arranger, and singer, from Rio de Janeiro. Clarice's influences are diverse: she is influenced by popular Brazilian culture, Romanticism, world music, and jazz. Beginning with her take on J.S. Bach, Clarice, joined by MITV musicians, will also perform songs by Jobim and Piazzolla. Following the concert, guests will enjoy dinner on the Inglenook terrace where they’ll have the opportunity to support MITV’s future by bidding on outstanding auction lots. Auction lots will be listed in early July including details of how to participate in our 30th Anniversary Online Auction throughout the festival. Hosted by Francis Ford Coppola and Inglenook in memory of Eleanor Coppola.