A magical blend of fine music by outstanding performers in one of the most enchanting sites in Northern California. Evenings include orchestra concerts, Big Band, chamber music ensembles, dance, blues, jazz, world, folk, bluegrass and popular contemporary music. Daytime concerts include lecture/recitals at the Piano Series, a performance by participants in the Emerging Artists Program, and small concerts in intimate venues throughout the historic town of Mendocino.

Schedule:

2:30 p.m: Stravinsky at Home: Music for Family, Friends, Lovers (Preston Hall)
The musicians will reveal surprising new sides to Stravinsky through the years in these intimate concerts. Alexander Katsman will accompany mezzo-soprano Silvie Jensen in Le Faune, a songs composed by Stravinsky during his honeymoon. Jensen will be joined a bit later by Alexander on "Cradle Songs for a Cat." Susan and Julian Waterfall Pollack will play "Eight Easy Pieces" on one piano. Eric Kritz will take a turn on "Three Solo Pieces for Clarinet," deeply moving and soulful Russian music. Following a brief intermission, Carolyn Steinbuck and Sam Weiser will play excerpts from Duo Concertante, Stravinsky's important work for piano and violin. Sarah Cahill and Elizabeth Dorman will team up on Concerto for Two Pianos, considered one of Stravinsky's major compositions for the instruments. Jensen and Katsman will return for "The Owl and the Pussycat," Stravinsky's final completed composition, which he based on a poem by Edward Lear.

7:30 p.m: Festival Orchestra 3 (Tent Concert Hall)
Festival Orchestra with guest conductor Francesco Lecce-Chong and soloist Julian Rhee. "Igor on My Mind," Allan Pollack's fun-loving, energetic and rhythmic piece, impishly steals motifs straight out of Igor Stravinsky's orchestral music. Then the real Stravinsky will be heard in the Violin Concerto in D, a neoclassical piece in four movements, written in the summer of 1931. It was used by George Balanchine as music for two ballets. Beethoven's 5th Symphony is one of the most-frequently played compositions in classical music, but after the familiar opening notes, it offers surprising new passages to the close listener. At the time he wrote it, Beethoven was becoming increasingly deaf and correspondingly interested in the music's theme of heroic struggle.