The Moab Music Festival is Planing on Music, and So Should You

Moab, UT --   The 28th season of the Moab Music Festival is a “Once-in-a-Lifetime” (Fodors) experience everyone will need. Running the gamut from chamber music to Latin and jazz, MMF Artistic Director and violist, Leslie Tomkins, and pianist and MMF Music Director Michael Barrett, have devised a singular tie-in to the worldwide celebrations of Ludwig van Beethoven’s 250th birthday. Beloved by audiences, the German master was powerfully inspired by composers who came before him, and had a seismic influence on succeeding generations of musical creators in so many genres. Beethoven’s varied interests – including nature – and immense breadth of imagination will be featured in works both famous and rare, amidst one of the world’s most magnificent landscapes.

MUSICAL RAFT TRIPS

The season kicks off with a journey for lovers of music, nature, and outdoor adventure: a custom 3-day/2-night Westwater Canyon Musical Raft Trip through the Colorado River's Ruby-Horsethief and Westwater Canyons, beginning on Monday, August 31 at 7am. Living up to the Festival's reputation as “an adventurer's paradise" (Smithsonian magazine), voyagers will spend part of the time drifting leisurely at the river's pace, followed by a morning of exciting whitewater rapids like Little Hummer, Funnel Falls, Last Chance, and the famous Skull Rapid formed as the Colorado River flows through a narrow black granite gorge. Patrons will enjoy daily concerts by two Festival superstars– cellist Jay Campbell and violinist Ayano Ninomiya – in extraordinary settings, as well as swimming, walks, and dining experiences. After bringing their inner rhythms in tune with the river, participants return to Moab on the last evening, Wednesday, September 2.

GROTTO CONCERTS

An exhilarating 45-minute jet boat ride down the Colorado River will bring listeners to "nature's own concert hall" (The New York Times) – a pristine, acoustically-perfect wilderness grotto carved from the surrounding red rocks. Imagine this grotto as a sonic marriage between the Sistine Chapel and Carnegie Hall, set within one of the most stunning natural settings to be found anywhere. The first of three signature Grotto Concerts, on Thursday, September 3, features acclaimed pianist-composer Michael Brown performing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in a brilliant, devilishly-difficult transcription for solo piano, as arranged by the towering pianist Franz Liszt. This rarely heard tour-de-force will be paired with some of Mozart’s music for two pianists playing together at one instrument. At the next grotto performance, on Wednesday, September 9, Brown returns to dazzle the audience with Beethoven’s monumental “Hammerklavier” Sonata, long considered unplayable, along with works by Robert Schumann for piano, four-hands. The final grotto adventure on Monday, September 14, the Festival finale, is Music of Faith and Belief, devoted to music by Johann Sebastian Bach. One of Bach’s magnum opuses, The Well-Tempered Clavier, was a lifelong touchstone for Beethoven from the time he learned the work by memory by age 12! Paying homage to Beethoven’s admiration for his older German compatriot, this program intersperses several of Bach’s sacred chorales with American spirituals for what is likely to be a transcendent experience.

Following the final Grotto Concert, when some patrons return to town, those adventurers who do not want their experience to end will set out on a custom 4-day/3-night Cataract Canyon Musical Raft Trip (September 14 through 17) on the Colorado River for yet another encounter of a lifetime. Setting off by raft for a “place where the awe comes easy” (KSL-TV), this trip takes the notion of wonder and astonishment to a whole other level. Along the river by day and at camp each night, the trip features daily concerts by extraordinary violinists Francisco Fullana and Cindy Wu (who will also play viola), and cellist Clancy Newman, as well as fine food and wine, and lively companionship. World renowned naturalist John Weisheit puts the surroundings in context, guiding guests to petroglyphs and petrified wood, and providing deep insights on geology and the Colorado River. Starting in flat-water and progressing to an exhilarating run through world-famous Cataract Canyon, the river portion of the trip ends at Lake Powell's Hite Marina, where participants catch a scenic flight with Redtail Air Adventures back to Moab, over Canyonlands National Park and the Colorado River, returning late on Thursday evening, September 17. Outfitted by Sheri Griffith River Expeditions.   

TAR HALL CONCERTS

Two performances take place at one of Moab’s landmark venues, the elegant Star Hall. On Friday, September 4 at 7pm, RUSSIA IN THE US looks at the immense impact of Russian émigrés and visitors in the U.S., who transformed the music world, including two generations of American concert and theater composers. The program ranges widely from works by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Serge Prokofiev, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Igor Stravinsky to novelties by Vernon Duke, Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, and George Gershwin. On Friday, September 11 at 6pm, Octomania! features Dmitri Shostakovich’s early, quirky work for eight strings, alongside the work on which it was based, Mendelssohn’s beloved Octet. Beethoven’s music makes also an appearance on this program with several of his works for cello and piano.