Napa Valley is renowned for its wine and Austria for its music, but this week we switch them out and celebrate the wines of Austria and music and film in Napa Valley. First, we welcome back guitarist Peppino D'Agostino who has teamed with longtime friend and another world-renowned guitarist, David Tanenbaum, to form the Pacific Guitar Ensemble, a group of diverse and dynamic guitar players from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music who will have their debut show and album launch at the Napa Valley Opera House on October 17th.
Next, the second annual Napa Valley Film Festival, showcasing feature films and documentaries from around the world, will settle in to the Opera House and surrounding venues to fill the Napa Valley with an eclectic mix of entertainment. Something great to sip good wine with! The festival co-creator and also producer of that great movie, Bottle Shock, Marc Lhormer, joins us to share the experience!
Finally we are delighted to welcome Sophie Moser, from Austria's Laurenz V Winery -- whose family has been producing wine since the 1600's -- to bring us a taste of Austrian lifestyle and wine!
Peppino D'Agostino
Pacific Guitar Ensemble
The Pacific Guitar Ensemble Featuring World Renowned
Guitarists Peppino D'Agostino and David Tanenbaum Kicks Off A Six City Northern
California Tour In Napa, October 17
The dates mark the official launch of the group's upcoming debut
CD 'Begin'—Several of whose tracks are being produced by Grammy Award
Winning Classical Guitarist Sergio Assad of The Assad Brothers (Paquito
D'Rivera, Yo-Yo Ma).
The Pacific Guitar Ensemble (www.pacificguitarensemble.com),
a dynamic eight-piece acoustic group comprised of world-renowned guitarists Peppino
D'Agostino (steel string) and David Tanenbaum (classical) along with Lawrence
Ferrara, Marc Teicholz, Jon Mendle, Michael Bautista, Antoniy Kakamakov and Paul
Psarras marks the official launch of their upcoming debut CD Begin with
a six city Northern California tour beginning October 17, 2012 at the Napa
Valley Opera House in Napa.
The itinerary includes the Raven Theatre in Healdsburg
October 21; 142 Throckmorton Theatre in Mill Valley October 25; The Palms in Winters,
California October 26; The Green Room in San Francisco October 27 and the Carriage
House Theatre in Saratoga November 11.
Begin is currently in its final stages of the
mastering process. Several of the tracks of this collection are being produced
by the legendary Grammy Award-winning Brazilian classical guitarist Sergio Assad
of the famed Assad Brothers. The Assad Brothers have collaborated with
contemporary classical greats Gideon Kremer, Yo-Yo Ma, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg
and Dawn Upshaw.
Peppino D'Agostino |
The Pacific Guitar Ensemble began in 2010 when D'Agostino
and Tanenbaum decided to form a larger guitar ensemble that could perform a
wide variety of repertoire. After they gathered together members of the guitar
faculty from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music along with some of its
most exceptional alumni, and combined nylon strings with steel, electric basses
with 17th century theorbos, a new eclectic group of pluckers was born.
While the Pacific Guitar Ensemble's repertoire features
original music written by composers like Sergio Assad, noted minimalist Perry
Riley and D'Agostino himself, it also includes fresh arrangements of great
composers from Bach to Brahms, Sor to Rossini.
D'Agostino has made a considerable international mark as a
musical artist on the guitar since he arrived in America more than 27 years
ago. The readers of Guitar Player voted him Best Acoustic Guitarist in 2007,
and the following year in Acoustic Guitar's People's Choice Awards he won a
Bronze medal for Best Acoustic Album of All Time for his 2002 release Every
Step of The Way (tying with Leo Kottke, one of his prime inspirations) and
another Bronze award as Fingerstyle Guitarist of the Year.
Recognized internationally as an outstanding performing and
recording artist, a charismatic educator, and a transcriber and editor of both
taste and intelligence,David Tanenbaum is one of the most admired classical
guitarists of his generation. He has performed throughout the U.S., Canada,
Mexico, Europe, Australia, the former Soviet Union and Asia, and in 1988 he
became the first American guitarist to be invited to perform in China by the Chinese
government. He has been soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San
Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, the Oakland
Symphony, Vienna's ORF orchestra, with such eminent conductors as Esa-Pekka
Salonen, Kent Nagano and John Adams.
Upcoming Shows:
Oct. 17, 2012 Napa, CA Napa Valley Opera HouseOct. 21, 2012 Healdsburg, CA Raven Theatre
Oct. 25, 2012 Mill Valley, CA Throckmorton Theatre
Oct. 26, 2012 Winters, CA The Palms
Oct. 27, 2012 San Francisco, CA The Green Room
Nov. 11, 2012 Saratoga, CA Montalvo Arts Center
Marc Lhormer
Co-Founder, Napa Valley Film Festival
Marc & Brenda Lhormer, Co-Founders of the Napa Valley Film Festival |
In his role as co-founder of the Film Festival with his wife, Brenda, Marc serves as both
Chairman of the Board of Trustees and Executive & Artistic Director. Brenda serves as Vice Chair of the Board and Co-Director. After running the Sonoma Valley Film Festival for seven years (2001 – 2008), and then producing their first feature film (BOTTLE SHOCK, which tells the story of Napa Valley wines beating the French at the infamous 1976 wine-tasting competition in Paris), Brenda and Marc decided to create a world-class film festival for Napa Valley with the notion of marrying the valley’s renowned food, wine and hospitality with a celebration of the art of cinematic story-telling.
Marc is a native of Pittsburgh who went to college at
Yale and business school at Stanford. Marc’s skills and experience span from
strategic/financial to artistic/creative. He worked at Bain & Company, and
then with several high-tech start ups, before turning his attention to the non-profit
space by starting the youth leadership development program City Year in
Seattle. Brenda and Marc were married in Napa Valley and have lived in Sonoma
since 1999.
Brenda grew up in the SF Bay Area and attended Stanford
University. She has a long background in
marketing, public relations and event production. Brenda has worked for the Los
Angeles Olympics, the San Francisco 49ers, Oracle and Microsoft, and for an
event production company called Amazing Events where she met her husband Marc.
About Napa Valley Film
Festival
Napa Valley Film Festival
Napa Valley
Film Festival showcases the best in new independent film making and world
cinema. Our vision is to build community around the art of visual
story-telling, with the viewing of films and discussions with filmmakers
fueling lively conversation amongst old and new friends … and those
conversations being enriched with the world-class food and wine of legendary
Napa Valley.
The Napa Valley Film Festival takes place on the second full
weekend of November each year. This period represents mid-fall and the tail end
of Napa Valley’s gorgeous harvest season. The festival runs from Wednesday
evening through Sunday night – what we like to refer to as an extended weekend,
the best kind.
Sophie Moser
Laurenz V Winery, AustriaAnna, Lorenz & Sophie Moser |
What young
girl does not dream of working on a terrific project together with her father?
But only a few girls are so lucky - or even have the right kind of father - for
this to happen. For Sophie Moser, however, this dream has come true.
Sophie grew up
next to her family’s company Lenz Moser Weinkellerei in Austria, which was sold
in 1986. Her family has been in the wine business since 1612 so it comes to
know surprise that she was engaged with the product from early onwards. Even as
a little child, Sophie and her father explored the vineyards together and and
talked a lot about the wine business. When Laurenz Moser founded his own
company, LAURENZ V., in 2005, they together created the wine “Laurenz and
Sophie“ as a symbol of their close relationship and passion for wine.
Sophie Moser
inherited her knowledge from her great-grandfather, the legendary Professor Dr. Lorenz Moser III.,(“Grand Pa Gruner “) who invented and
developed the ubiquitous Austrian trellising system called the "Lenz Moser
Hocherziehung", which revolutionized vineyard cultivation right across
Europe. Grand Pa Gruner also helped to promote Gruner Veltliner from a tiny
grape variety in the late 20-ies of 1900’s to the number one Austrian grape,
the modern ambassador for the country’s whites.
Sophie has
graduated in 2009 from Marymount International School London and just finished
her Bachelor Degree of Business Management at King’s College London in 2012.
She is now interning at various wine and marketing companies in order to deepen
her knowledge and gain some experience.
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