Stefan is one of America’s foremost violinists hailed for playing of “uncommon musical substance” that is “striking for its intelligence and sensitivity” (Boston Globe). He has appeared as soloist with the Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco symphony orchestras, and such ensembles as the London, Seoul, Tokyo Philharmonics and the Philharmonia Orchestra. Festivals and concert series appearances include the Aspen Music Festival, Tanglewood Music Festival, Mostly Mozart Festival, the Celebrity Series of Boston, the Philharmonie de Paris, and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw.
An active chamber musician, Stefan is a member of the Junction Trio, together with pianist Conrad Tao and cellist Jay Campbell. His discography includes the complete Brahms violin sonatas on Sony, and a forthcoming recording of the complete Ives violin sonatas with his frequent collaborator, pianist Jeremy Denk. Jackiw also recently recorded the Beethoven Triple concerto with cellist Alisa Weilerstein, pianist Inon Barnatan, and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, conducted by Alan Gilbert on Decca. Stefan is a committed teacher and has recently joined the Faculty at the Mannes School of Music. He frequently gives masterclasses at prestigious conservatories and universities, such as the Colburn School, Harvard University, University of Michigan, Bard College, Manhattan School of Music, Vanderbilt University, Sydney Conservatorium, and the Australian National Academy of Music. In 2020, Jackiw started a free monthly online masterclass series, called Stefan’s Sessions, in which he leads an analysis of one of the masterpieces of the violin repertoire, addressing matters of interpretation, technical solutions, historical context, and performance preparation.
Andy is a “trailblazing” (Los Angeles Times) and “increasingly in-demand” (New York Times) Pulitzer Prize finalist and seven-time GRAMMY®-nominated composer whose bold works unravel intricate and unexpected patterns while surpassing preconceived boundaries of classical music. He is the only composer to be nominated for a GRAMMY® in the Best Contemporary Classical Composition category in 2022, 2023, and 2024.
Recent highlights include the world premieres of several major works, including Nisei — a sweeping concerto for cellist Jeffrey Zeigler — which headlined at the Sun Valley Music Festival, Sculptures, a groundbreaking, triple GRAMMY®-nominated work for Omaha Symphony honoring renowned visual artist Jun Kaneko, and BeLonging, a powerful new collaboration with Imani Winds, receiving two GRAMMY® nominations. Andy was also the Oregon Symphony’s 2024-25 composer-in-residence.
Andy has been recognized via many prestigious awards including the Rome Prize, American Academy of Arts and Letters, Lili Boulanger Memorial Prize, Harvard University Fromm Commission, Barlow Endowment, New Music USA, and Chamber Music America. His compositions have been featured by Bang on a Can, American Composers Forum, The Intimacy of Creativity in Hong Kong, and the Heidelberg Festival.
An active steel pannist, Andy has performed his works with Imani Winds, the LA Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella Series, the Berlin Philharmonic’s Scharoun Ensemble, the International Drum Festival in Taiwan, and more. His recordings No One To Know One, The War Below, Seven Pillars, Oculus, Sculptures, and BeLonging feature brilliantly crafted compositions inspired by his primary instrument, the steel pan.
Tanya, cellist and co-founder/Director of the Valley of the Moon Music Festival, is equally at home on historical and modern instruments. Passionate about chamber music, Tanya has been featured in recitals and at chamber music festivals across the United States, Canada, and Europe, and is a member of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. Tanya also recorded the complete Bach Cello Suites, performing them at venues including New York’s Le Poisson Rouge, Vancouver’s Early Music Society, Santa Fe’s Pro Musica, and the Library of Congress. For many years, Tanya was principal cellist and a frequent soloist for both San Francisco’s Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and the Portland Baroque Orchestra. Tanya is now devoting more time to mentoring the next generation of musicians. The experiences of musical friendship and mentoring from her years in Holland studying with cellist, Anner Bijlsma are whatinspired Tanya, together with VMMF co-Director Eric Zivian, to create the Apprenticeship,Laureate and Emerging Artists Programs at the Valley of the Moon Music Festival. Tanyahas mentored young musicians in master classes at Yale, the San FranciscoConservatory of Music, and through her frequent appearances as a guest teacher atJuilliard’s Historical Performance Department.
Claire is an American pianist who continuously captivates audiences with her “radiant virtuosity, artistic sensitivity, keen interactive sense and subtle auditory dramaturgy” (Salzburger Nachrichten). With an irrepressible curiosity and penchant for unusual repertoire, she proves her versatility with a wide range of repertoire spanning from Bach and Scarlatti via German and Russian romanticism to Bernstein, Gulda and Corigliano.
Claire’s international career began at age nine and she has won numerous competitions including first prize at the European Chopin competition and the US National Chopin competition (2009, 2010). Claire was the youngest participant to receive second prize at the International ARD Music Competition (2011) and was awarded the grand prize at the Geza Anda Competition (2018) and the Chambre Orchestre de Paris Play-Direct academy (2019).
A sought-after soloist and recitalist, Claire has appeared in prestigious halls all over the world. Claire’s extensive discography of critically-acclaimed solo, chamber, and concerto recordings show her keen interest in a diverse pool of repertoire and span works by Bach, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Scarlatti, Chopin, and Rachmanioff. This season, she will release an album of Mozart concerti with Howard Griffiths and the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, to be released on Alpha Classics. Claire is a proud ambassador of Henle Verlag. clairehuangci.com
Announcing the Michael Barrett Endowment Fund To honor Michael Barrett as Moab Music Festival co-founder and celebrate over 32 years of his visionary programmatic leadership, we are excited to announce the Michael Barrett Endowment Fund. We invite you to make a contribution today! By giving to this endowment, you’re helping to establish The Michael Barrett Young Artist Fellowship, which annuallyrecognizes the entrepreneurialspiritof one of the young musicians performing at the Festival. CLICK HERE to give online. For more ways to give, visit our SUPPORT PAGE.
Michael has distinguished himself as a conductor with major orchestras here and abroad in the symphonic and operatic world. A protégé of Leonard Bernstein, he began his association with the renowned conductor and composer as a student in 1982, later serving as Maestro Bernstein’s assistant conductor from 1985–1990. Co-founder of both the New York Festival of Song (NYFOS) and the Moab Music Festival, Michael was previously Director of the Tisch Center for the Arts and the 92nd Street Y in New York, and Chief Executive and General Director of the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in Katonah, NY.
Michael holds artistic leadership positions at the Moab Music Festival and NYFOS, and worked on the Leonard Bernstein Centennial as a producer, conductor, and pianist. A champion of new music, Michael has conducted and played premieres by nearly 100 composers and considers new music to be the lifeblood of American musical culture. He oversees NYFOS Next a series in New York City which examines the latest in songwriting by established and young composers. Dedicated to music education, he oversees the innovative education programs of the Moab Music Festival. He is also active in the creation of new educational programs for symphony orchestras in collaboration with Jamie Bernstein. Their programs have been performed throughout the US, Asia, Cuba, and Europe. Born in Guam and raised in California, Michael attended the University of California, Berkeley and is a graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Aug 27 – Opening Night: Celebrating 33 Years of Moab Music Festival
Cellist Clancy Newman, first prize winner of the prestigious Naumburg International Competition and recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, has had the unusual career of a performer/composer. He received his first significant public recognition at the age of twelve, when he won a Gold Medal at the Dandenong Youth Festival in Australia, competing against people twice his age. Since then, he has performed as soloist throughout the United States, as well as in Europe, Asia, Canada, and Australia. He can often be heard on NPR’s “Performance Today” and has been featured on A&E and PBS. A sought after chamber musician, he is a member of the Clarosa piano quartet and a former member of Chamber Music Society Two of Lincoln Center and Musicians from Marlboro. As a composer, he has expanded cello technique in ways heretofore thought unimaginable, particularly in his “Pop-Unpopped” project, which been ongoing since 2014. He has also written numerous chamber works, and has been a featured composer on series by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Chicago Chamber Musicians. In March 2019, his piano quintet, commissioned by the Ryuji Ueno Foundation, was premiered at the opening ceremony of the National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington DC. Mr. Newman is a graduate of the five-year exchange program between Juilliard and Columbia University, receiving a M.M. from Juilliard and a B.A. in English from Columbia.
Praised by the Seattle Times as “Simply marvelous” and Taiwan’s Liberty Times for “astonishingly capturing the spirit of the music,” violinist Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu enjoys a versatile career as a soloist, chamber musician, and educator throughout North America, Europe and Asia. Cindy has collaborated in concerts with renowned artists such as Yefim Bronfman, Lynn Harrell, Leila Josefowicz, Cho-Liang Lin, Midori, Thomas Quasthoff, Yuja Wang, and members of the Alban Berg, Emerson, Guarneri, Miró, and Tokyo string quartets at prominent venues such as the Kennedy Center, Library of Congress, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and festivals such as Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, La Jolla Summerfest, Marlboro Music Festival, and Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. She has also collaborated as a guest violist with the Dover, Orion, and Shanghai quartets. Cindy is a recipient of many awards including the Milka Violin Artist Prize from the Curtis Institute of Music, and third prize at the International Violin Competition of David Oistrakh. She has taught at the Thornton School of Music of the
University of Southern California, and curated programs for the Da Camera Society in Los Angeles as the Artistic Partner, and is currently the Music Director of New Asia Chamber Music Society. Cindy plays on a 1918 Stefano Scarampella violin and a 2015 Stanley Kiernoziak viola.
Peter prizes versatility as the hallmark of today’s musician and advocates for a classical music culture that is inclusive and welcoming to all. That approach has manifested in a multifaceted and dynamic career as a pianist, composer, collaborator, and radio host. A musician equally at home in classical, jazz, and pop idioms, Peter has appeared as soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician across North America and around the world—his performance of the Ives Fourth Symphony with the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas was described by the Los Angeles Times as “stunning” and by the San Francisco Chronicle as “fearlessly athletic.” He is heard on radios nationwide weekly as host of NPR’s From the Top; is an active and passionate collaborator who has toured extensively with violinists Joshua Bell and Charles Yang, and vocalists John Brancy and Kara Dugan (his wife); and is a composer who has performed his own works everywhere from Carnegie Hall to Joe’s Pub and had his arrangements released by Disney+.
Michael has been described as “one of the leading figures in the current renaissance of performer-composers” (The New York Times). Winner of a 2018 Emerging Artist Award from Lincoln Center and a 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant, he is an artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He makes regular appearances with orchestras such as the National Philharmonic, the Seattle, Grand Rapids, North Carolina, and Albany symphonies, and was selected by pianist András Schiff to perform an international solo recital tour, making debuts in Zurich’s Tonhalle and New York’s 92nd Street Y.
A prolific composer, Michael’s Piano Concerto was premiered in 2021 by the Kalamazoo Symphony. He was the composer and artist-in-residence at the New Haven Symphony for the 2017-19 seasons and a 2018 Copland House Award winner. He has appeared at the Tanglewood, Mostly Mozart, Marlboro, Ravinia, Music@Menlo, Tippet Rise, Moab, Bridgehampton, and Bard music festivals and performs regularly with his longtime duo partner, cellist Nicholas Canellakis. He is the First Prize winner of the Concert Artists Guild competition, and earned degrees in piano and composition from The Juilliard School, where he studied with pianists Jerome Lowenthal and Robert McDonald and composers Samuel Adler and Robert Beaser. A native New Yorker, he lives there with his two 19th-century Steinway D’s, Octavia and Daria. michaelbrownmusic.com
Aug 30 – Floating Concert I: Keyboards on the Colorado
Kristin is a violinist of remarkable versatility and impeccable technique who enjoys a vibrant career as soloist, chamber musician, educator, and artistic director. “Her technique is flawless, and she has a sense of melodic shaping that reflects an artistic maturity,” writes the St. Louis Post-Dispatch; and The Strad reports, “She seemsentirely comfortable with stylistic diversity, which is one criterion that separates the run-of-the-mill instrumentalists from true artists.” As a soloist, Kristin has appeared with leading orchestras worldwide including the Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Ural Philharmonic of Russia, Korean Broadcasting Symphony, Guiyang Symphony Orchestra of China, and Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional of Dominican Republic. She has performed on the world’s finest concert stages, including Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, the Kennedy Center, Kimmel Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Ravinia Festival, the Louvre Museum, the Phillips Collection, and Korea’s Kumho Art Gallery. An accomplished chamber musician, Kristin is a member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
She has served on the faculty of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and is the founding artistic director of Emerald City Music. Kristin’s honors include an Avery Fisher Career Grant, top prizes in the Walter W. Naumburg Competition and the Astral Artists National Auditions, and awards from the Trondheim Chamber Music Competition, Trio di Trieste Premio International Competition, the SYLFF Fellowship, Dorothy DeLay Scholarship, the Aspen Music Festival’s Violin Competition, the New Jersey Young Artists’ Competition, and the Salon de Virtuosi Scholarship Foundation. Kristin plays a 1759 violin crafted by Gennaro Gagliano generously on loan by Paul & Linda Gridley. violinistkristinlee.com
