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
Aug 31 – People of Earth: Latin Fusion Collective
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
Cynthia is an esteemed violist whose wide-ranging career has taken her to stages across the world as soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, and pedagogue. Principal Violist of the New York Philharmonic for over two decades, she is a regularly featured soloist with the orchestra both at home and abroad, in a variety of repertoire, including two world premieres written solely for her. Other concerto appearances have been with the Minnesota Orchestra, Shanghai, Vermont, Santa Barbara, Eastern Music Festival, and San Diego Symphonies, Orquesta Sinfonica de Bilbao, and Rochester and Hong Kong Philharmonics. Known for her emotional nuance, virtuosic technique, and plush tone, she is a founding member of both the New York Philharmonic String Quartet, and Les Amies trio, and is a frequent guest with chamber series across the globe. She has been featured in several nationwide “Live from Lincoln Center” telecasts, on National Public Radio, Radio France, Italy‘s RAI, and in regular broadcasts from the 92Y, including collaborations with Emanuel Ax and Daniil Trifonov. She is on the faculty of the Juilliard School Shanghai Academy, Music Academy of the West, and Mannes College of Music.
Upcoming Performances:
Aug 28 – A Movable, Musical Feast
Aug 29 – Grotto I: 19th Century Classics
Aug 31 – Music Hike I: Mozart in the Morning
Aug 31 – Red Cliffs I: Colorado Currents
Sep 1 – Red Cliffs II: BAILEN
Praised as a “gifted, adventuresome violinist” by the Chicago Tribune and as a “remarkable, unbelievable violinist/violist extraordinaire” by the syndicated radio program Relevant Tones, Austin has gained critical and audience attention through his “wide technical range and interpretive daring” (New Music Box) as a soloist and chamber musician. He first forged his reputation in Chicago with the collective Ensemble Dal Niente, serving as the group’s Program Director, and winning the Kranichstein Music Prize (the grand prize for interpretation) at the Darmstadt Summer Course in 2012. Austin was also a founding member of Spektral Quartet, serving as Ensemble-in-Residence (as well as Adjunct Instructor of Violin) at the University of Chicago from 2011-2016. Consistently in search of new musical pathways through ensemble work, Austin has collaborated with a wide range of musical voices, from artists like Deerhoof and Julia Holter, to Miguel Zenon and Billy Childs, or Brian Ferneyhough and Kaija Saariaho. Furthermore, he has also been a guest artist with groups such as Eighth Blackbird, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNow Ensemble. His debut solo release Diligence Is to Magic as Progress Is to Flight was released in 2014 in collaboration with bassoonist/composer Katherine Young. Austin holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Northwestern University, as well as having held fellowships at the Aspen Music Festival and Lucerne Academy. Austin serves on the faculty of the Mannes School of Music, where JACK is Quartet in Residence.
Winner of numerous prizes including the Walter Naumburg International Competition,
Tibor Varga International Competition, Astral Artists National Auditions, Young
Performers Career Advancement, and Lili Boulanger awards, Ayano has performed with
orchestras across the U.S., Switzerland, Bulgaria, and most recently in Carnegie Hall.
Praised for her “deeply communicative and engrossing” (The New York Times)
performances, she has performed at the Marlboro, Ravinia, Moab, Bowdoin, Kingston,
Adams (New Zealand), Canberra International (Australia), and Prussia Cove (England)
festivals. She has been featured on Musicians from Marlboro tours in the U.S. and
France, and gave a TEDx talk at the University of Tokyo. She was first violinist of the
Ying Quartet and was Associate Professor at the Eastman School of Music until 2015
when she joined the violin faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music. As a
recipient of the Beebe Fellowship, Ayano studied in Budapest, Hungary, at the Liszt
Academy after graduating from Harvard University and The Juilliard School. In her
spare time, she loves to paint and practice Aikido.
Upcoming performances:
Aug 24 – New Music at Red Earth
Aug 25 – American Minimalism: A Retrospective
Aug 27 – Floating Concert
Announcing the Leslie Tomkins Endowment Fund
To honor Leslie Tomkins as Moab Music Festival co-founder and celebrate over 32 years of her visionary artistic leadership, we are excited to announce the Leslie Tomkins Endowment Fund. We invite you to make a contribution today! By giving to this endowment, you’re helping enshrine for future generations the work near and dear to Leslie’s heart: connecting people intimately to the magic that is music in concert with the landscape. CLICK HERE to give online. For more ways to give, visit our SUPPORT PAGE.
Leslie was inspired by the red rocks of Moab to create the Moab Music Festival of which she is the Co-Founder and Artistic Director. Now in its 32nd year, the critically acclaimed chamber music festival is known for presenting music in concert with the landscape among the striking red rocks of southeastern Utah. Additionally, she is the Artistic Director of Summertrios (summertrios.org), an organization that offers chamber music coaching and performance opportunities to adult non-professional musicians of all levels. She is a member of the Dal Sogno chamber ensemble which is dedicated to sharing the works of under-recognized composers. Based in the Bronx, Leslie enjoys the richly diverse musical life that New York City offers, performing at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Madison Square Garden, Lincoln Center, and playing chamber music and coaching student and professional chamber ensembles. Leslie is on the Advisory Committee of the Valley of the Moon Music Festival and mentors women in leadership roles of several non-profit arts organizations. She enjoys hiking with her poodle Lulu, gyrotonics, speed skating, bungee fitness, travelling and looking at art.
Upcoming Performances:
Aug 27 – Opening Night: Celebrating 33 Years of Moab Music Festival