User:Susanthames/Moab music festival


 * Pianist Michael Barrett and violist Leslie Tomkins of New York were vacationing in the U.S. Southwest and were so taken with the area surrounding Canyonlands and Arches National Parks in Utah’s red rock country that they chose it for the ```Moab Music Festival``` which had its first season in 1992. Since then, the Festival has sought to bring together highly accomplished musicians with the extraordinary landscape of southeastern the Utah and to bring musical opportunities to the Moab community, especially to its children.  Classical chamber music has always been central to the Festival’s programming, but other types of music – jazz, ragtime, traditional folk music, and the music of living composers - are also part of the repertoire.
 * Beginning on the Thursday before Labor Day weekend and extending over eleven days, the Festival offers a dozen concerts in indoor and outdoor venues throughout the Moab area. Unique among them are the three benefit Colorado River Grotto concerts; audience members, musicians and a grand piano travel 30 downriver by motorized jet boat to a place of visual and sonic beauty. The third of these grotto events extends into a four-day/three night rafting trip down the Colorado River with music performed on-board and on-shore.
 * Over the course of the Festival’s history, close to 150 professional, world-class musicians have performed in Moab, many arranging busy touring schedules to again make music in the Moab landscape. In addition, the Festival often hosts a distinguished American composer as Composer-in-Residence.  Past Composers-in-Residence include James Sellars, Lukas Foss, Peter Lieberson, Bruce Adolphe, Zhou Long, Chen Yi, Lowell Lieberman, Richard Danielpour, Aaron Jay Kernis, Paul Moravec, Carla Kihlstedt, William Bolcom, Kenji Bunch, Paquito D’Rivera, and for 2011 David Amram.
 * The festival has issued two compilation CDs, “Moab Music Festival” featuring Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, and “Music in Concert with the Landscape” which includes music by Anton Dvorak, Darius Milhaud, Bela Bartok and Toru Takemitsu.
 * Each season, the Education Outreach Program works with the Grand County School District, sending Festival musicians – including Music Director Michael Barrett — to local schools with programs designed for children, featuring tutorials on the music they play and the instruments they play on. Since 2002, Moab Music Festival’s musicians and composers have spent time in Moab as Artists-in-Residence, offering music classes and workshops at varying levels to both children and adults, coaching local composers, presenting public lecture/ performances, and hosting radio programs on the community’s public radio station KZMU.  Artists-in-Residence helped create the Moab Community Dance Band, which has encouraged area residents to re-invigorate a rich local history of contra-dancing and square dancing and assisted the Moab Community Chorus.
 * In 2006, the Festival organized its first music workshop for amateur musicians. Participating local musicians joined many from around the US to coach instrumental technique and repertoire with the Festival’s professional musicians.
 * The Moab Music Festival was recognized with the 2002 Governor’s Award in the Arts in the category of Arts Organizations from the Utah Arts Council, received the 2003 First Prize for “Adventurous Programming” in the Music Festivals category from the American Society of Composers, Artists, and Publishers (ASCAP) and a 2007 Utah Governor’s Mansion Arts Award.

HEADLINERS
Turtle Island Quartet Shanghai Quartet Paquito D'Rivera David Krakauer Christopher Taylor John Musto & Amy Burton Derek Bermel Chucho Valdez Jorge-Luis Prats ETHEL David Amram Chris Thile and The Punch Brothers Pamela Frank

REGULARS
Michael Barrett Leslie Tomkins Tanya Tomkins Eric Zivian Paul Woodiel Christopher Layer