Artist - Moab Music Festival

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

Upcoming Performances:

Aug 26 – Piano Marathon: One Day, Three Concerts

Aug 27 – Floating Concert

Aug 31 – Grotto I: Bach in the Grotto

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 annually recognizes the entrepreneurial spirit of 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.

Upcoming Performances:

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.

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

Upcoming Performances:

Aug 29 – Grotto I: 19th Century Classics

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 seems entirely 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

Upcoming Performances:

Sep 6 – Music Hike III: Living Legends

Sep 7 – The Promise of Peace

Sep 8 – House Benefit Concert: An Intimate Evening with Inon Barnatan & Frank Vignola

Sep 9 – Grotto III: Manouche!

Called “wholesome-looking” by the New York Times, Johnhas gained a reputation for performing new and unusual music around the globe. He was a founding member of the ensemble Alarm Will Sound and now serves both as JACK’s violist and Executive Director. John has appeared with artists including Björk and Grizzly Bear and has performed as soloist with the Pasadena Symphony, Armenian Philharmonic, Wordless Music Orchestra, OSSIA, and with the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra playing the solo part to Luciano Berio’s Chemins II under the direction of Pierre Boulez. He holds degrees from the Interlochen Arts Academy and Eastman School of Music where his primary teachers were David Holland and John Graham. John serves on the faculty of the Mannes School of Music, where JACK is Quartet in Residence.

Jay is a cellist actively exploring a wide range of creative music. He has been recognized for approaching both old and new music with the same curiosity and commitment, described as “an ambassador of musical possibility” (New York Times), and “electrifying, poignant, and deeply moving” (Washington Post). His primary artistic interest is the collaboration with living creative musicians and has worked in this capacity with John Zorn, Catherine Lamb, John Luther Adams, Marcos Balter, Tyshawn Sorey, and many others. He has received two Avery Fisher Career Grants, both as a soloist and as a member of the JACK Quartet. He made his concerto debut with the New York Philharmonic in 2013 and gone on to perform with Los Angeles Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the Gulbenkian Orchestra, Orquestra Sinfonica do Estado de Sao Paulo, and served as Artist-in-Residence at the Lucerne Festival along with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. He has recorded the concertos of George Perle and Marc-Andre Dalbavie with the Seattle Symphony, and premiered new concertos by Wadada Leo Smith, Andreia Pinto-Correia, inti figgis-vizueta, and Luca Francesconi. He is a member of the Junction Trio with Stefan Jackiw and Conrad Tao and teaches at the Mannes School of Music.

Upcoming Performances:

Aug 29 – Next Week’s Trees

Aug 30 – Music Hike I: A Little Respite

Aug 31 – Music Hike II: Catharsis Canyon

Sep 4 – Grotto II: Classics Reimagined

Sep 6 – Music Hike III: Living Legends

Sep 9 – Grotto III: Manouche!

Sep 9-12 – Cataract Canyon Musical Raft Trip

A native of Mallorca in the Balearic Islands of Spain, Francisco is making a name for himself as both a performer and a leader of innovative educational institutions. A recipient of the 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant, he has performed as soloist with orchestras such as the Münchner Rundfunkorchester, Spanish Radio Television Orchestra, Argentina’s National Orchestra, Venezuela’s Teresa Carreño Orchestra, and numerous U.S. ensembles including the Saint Paul and Philadelphia Chamber Orchestras, the Buffalo Philharmonic, and the Vancouver, Pacific, Alabama, and Maryland Symphony Orchestras. He has worked with such noted conductors as the late Sir Colin Davis, Gustavo Dudamel, Alondra de la Parra, Christoph Poppen, Jeannette Sorrell, and Joshua Weilerstein.

This past May, Orchid Classics released Francisco’s new album, Bach’s Long Shadow, an exploration of Bach’s Partitas and their influence over the solo violin genre for the past three centuries. Fullana’s love for the sound of gut strings has also blossomed into an artistic partnership with the Grammy Award winning baroque ensemble Apollo’s Fire, both in performance and in the recording of Spanish and Italian baroque music.

Active as a chamber musician, Francisco is a performing member of The Bowers Program at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln. Francisco is also a committed innovator, leading new institutions of musical education for young people. He is a co-founder of San Antonio’s Classical Music Summer Institute, where he currently serves as Chamber Music Director. He also created the Fortissimo Youth Initiative, a series of music seminars and performances with youth orchestras, which aims to explore and deepen young musicians’ understanding of 18th-century music.

Francisco performs on the 1735 “Mary Portman” ex-Kreisler Guarneri del Gesù violin, kindly on loan from Clement and Karen Arrison through the Stradivari Society of Chicago.

Upcoming Performances:

Sept 10 – Music Hike II: Free Voices of Eastern Europe

Sept 10 – The Four Seasons According to Glass and Piazzolla

Sept 11 – Grotto III: German Masterpieces

Eric is a pianist, fortepianist, and composer, with degrees in piano and composition from Curtis, Juilliard, and the Yale School of Music. He is founder and Music Director of the Valley of the Moon Music Festival in Sonoma, specializing in Classical and Romantic music on period instruments. Eric has performed extensively on fortepiano since 2000. In recent years, Eric performed the Mozart C minor Concerto with the Portland Baroque Orchestra and the Beethoven Choral Fantasy with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. At the height of the pandemic, he livestreamed all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas on period pianos.

Upcoming Performances:

Aug 27 – Opening Night: Celebrating 33 Years of Moab Music Festival

Aug 28 – Grotto I: Colorado River Winds

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