Music@Menlo/2004 New Chamber Music Festival on the San Francisco Peninsula Announces 2nd Season July 29 – August 15, 2004 The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Pledges Renewed Two-Year Grant Publicity: Milina Barry PR 212.420.0200 Returning after a highly successful inaugural year, Music@Menlo opens its second season on the San Francisco Peninsula July 29 - August 15, 2004. Greeted by overwhelming popular and critical acclaim in 2003, Music@Menlo continues to forge new inroads for chamber music in the heart of Silicon Valley. Long recognized as the epicenter of the Internet revolution, Music@Menlo captures the region’s spirit of exploration and innovation by reinventing the concept of the chamber music festival. With the determination to rejuvenate and transform the classical music experience, this coming season explores the languages of five definitive musical cultures: ITALY, VIENNA, FRANCE, EASTERN EUROPE, and RUSSIA. The programs offer sonic immersions into these diverse cultural environments, highlighted by vocal music sung in the composers’ native tongues. Founders and Artistic Directors David Finckel and Wu Han have assembled a distinguished roster of artists, scholars, and musicologists this summer. In an effort to connect audiences to chamber music in an intimate and spontaneous setting, Finckel and Wu Han have created a multi-layered musical experience: through its innovative programming, AudioNotes, Café Conversations and Encounters series featuring the nation’s leading musicologists, Music@Menlo offers a festival experience replete with opportunities for discovering great music. Cultivating the classical music landscape for future generations is a significant component of Music@Menlo’s mission, and the education of promising young musicians forms an intrinsic part of this goal. The festival artists brought together at Music@Menlo form a faculty that rivals the nation’s top conservatories. Music@Menlo’s offerings include an intensive two-week Workshop for top young ensembles, open Master Classes, pre-concert recitals, Young Performers’ Concerts and a daylong Chamber Music Open House for music lovers and amateur musicians of all ages. Festival Announcement: Music@Menlo 2004 ___ Page 2 Music@Menlo/ 2004 is made possible in part by a renewed, two-year leadership grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the visionary support of many individuals and organizations locally and throughout the United States. 2004 HIGHLIGHTS FESTIVAL ARTISTS Artistic Directors David Finckel, cellist of the Grammy Award-winning Emerson String Quartet, and Wu Han, pianist, recording artist and co-founder of the Internet-based recording company ArtistLed, have assembled a stellar roster of over three dozen guest artists for Music@Menlo/2004: Jorja Fleezanis, violinist and Concertmaster, Minnesota Orchestra; Ani Kavafian, violinist, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; Elmar Oliveira, violinist; Philip Setzer, violinist, Emerson String Quartet; Ian Swensen, violinist; Sophie Arbuckle, violinist and festival Chamber Music Workshop co-director; Arik Braude, violinist and festival Chamber Music Workshop co-director; Hsin-Yun Huang, violist; Cynthia Phelps, Principal Violist, New York Philharmonic; Geraldine Walther, Principal Violist, San Francisco Symphony; Colin Carr, cellist, Sequenza; Ronald Thomas, cellist; Wendy Warner, cellist; Peter Wyrick, Associate Principle Cellist, San Francisco Symphony; Charles Chandler, bassist, San Francisco Symphony; distinguished pianists Jeffrey Kahane, Gilbert Kalish and Derek Han; and leading Baroque harpsichordist Kenneth Cooper. Singers will include sopranos, Dina Kuznetsova and Josephine Mongiardo; mezzo-soprano Milagro Vargas; and the young, emerging baritone Nathaniel Webster. Distinguished wind soloists also join the festival: acclaimed flutist Carol Wincenc; Anthony McGill, Associate Principal Clarinetist, Cincinnati Symphony; Allan Vogel, Principal Oboist, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; Dennis Godburn, bassoon; James Rodseth, trumpet; and David Washburn, Principal Trumpet, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. NEW IN 2004 CARTE BLANCHE CONCERTS A new addition this season are the Carte Blanche Concerts, a series highlighting festival artists and their musical expertise and passions. Violinist ANI KAVAFIAN and harpsichordist KENNETH COOPER offer the complete Sonatas for Violin and Keyboard of Johann Sebastian Bach (August 1), and cellist COLIN CARR performs Bach’s complete Suites for Solo Cello (August 8). These two cycles, each rarely offered as a single program, give audiences a special opportunity to experience the musical brilliance of Bach on an intimate scale. Both concerts are at Stent Family Hall, Menlo School, at 11:00am. Festival Announcement: Music@Menlo 2004 ___ Page 3 NEW FESTIVAL LABEL This summer the festival launches its own recording label, Music@Menlo LIVE. In an effort to capture the live concert experience on disc, selected concert recordings produced by Grammy Award-winning engineer Da-Hong Seetoo will be available via the festival’s Web site and at Music@Menlo’s venues throughout the festival. CAFÉ CONVERSATIONS Music@Menlo/2004 will inaugurate a new series that offers artists and audiences further opportunities for interaction outside of the concert hall. A variety of informal discussions and presentations will focus on topics related to music and the arts. The Café Conversations will feature subjects as diverse as poetry and music, the human voice, music criticism, the art of interpretation, the music of Bach, and the great Italian violinmakers. In the spirit of Europe’s great coffee houses, discussion will be coupled with refreshments. A complete schedule of Café Conversations, including times, topics, and locations, will be announced on the festival Web site (www.musicatmenlo.org) in June. FESTIVAL ELEMENTS: Discovery, Understanding, Engagement ENCOUNTERS The Encounters, Music@Menlo’s signature series of full-length evening events in Stent Family Hall, explore the composers’ worlds, examining the origin and essence of the musical styles featured in each of the concert programs. The series is hosted by a select group of today’s leading musical authorities, providing insight through thoughtful discussion and visual and musical illustration. Widely acclaimed scholar, pianist, and multimedia artist ROBERT WINTER opens the festival (July 29) with a journey through the vibrant musical history of Italy, from the Baroque era to the dawn of the twentieth century, illuminating Italy’s social, artistic, and cultural trends. Musicologist and author MICHAEL STEINBERG will transport listeners into the rarefied world of Franz Schubert’s Vienna (August 1). ARA GUZELIMIAN, Artistic Adviser of Carnegie Hall and a recent recipient of France’s prestigious Legion of Honor for his service to French music, returns to the festival (August 5) to explore the rich musical heritage of Fauré, Debussy, Ravel, and Dutilleux. TIM PAGE, author and Pulitzer Prize–winning music critic of the Washington Post, explores the folk origins of the music of Eastern Europe. This program, woven from an intricate tapestry of peasant styles and traditions, examines such nationalist composers as Bartók, Smetana and Dvorák (August 8). CHARLES BARBER, conductor, lecturer for the San Francisco Symphony, and author of the celebrated biography “Lost in the Stars: The Forgotten Musical Life of Alexander Siloti”, leads audiences on a trek through Russia’s musical landscape from the Festival Announcement: Music@Menlo 2004 ___ Page 4 Western European influence in the music of Tchaikovsky to the socially conscious works of Shostakovich (August 12). Encounters begin at 7:30 p.m. and are held at Menlo School’s Stent Family Hall. AUDIONOTES An educational innovation born at Music@Menlo, AudioNotes offer listeners informative and entertaining introductions to each concert program. AudioNotes CDs, which are provided free to advance ticket buyers, explore the composers’ lives and music through historical explanations and musical examples from the coming concert. Each disc is intended to inform audiences before each concert so as to provide a richer musical experience. AudioNotes are authored and narrated by Artistic Directors David Finckel and Wu Han, and Artistic Administrator Patrick Castillo, and feature discussions with the festival musicians themselves. AudioNotes is made possible by a renewed grant from the Barnard/Fain Foundation. WORKSHOPS FOR CHAMBER MUSIC Music@Menlo’s Workshops for Chamber Music surpassed all expectations last summer. The program, designed to offer a rigorous professional training ground and a wide array of performance opportunities to young musicians, selects students from conservatories, youth orchestras, and music programs from within the Bay Area, nationwide, and around the world. The festival’s unflinching ideals are reflected in the fact that three of the festival’s ten students from last summer’s top tier workshop program were selected for Carnegie Hall’s November 2003 Michael Tilson Thomas Workshop, for which only 14 applicants were accepted internationally. Music@Menlo’s Prelude Performances offer repertoire related to the main concert programs and are performed by the festival’s International Program artists, the workshop’s most advanced students. These one-hour, open-to-the-public concerts not only offer newcomers ideal, cost-free introductions to the festival, but also serve as significant musical additions to the evening programs. Prelude Performances are at 6:00 p.m. at St. Mark’s