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Since 2006, Napa Valley’s Festival del Sole has lured the likes of Joshua Bell and the Russian National Orchestra to wine country in the summer months for an orgy of the tasteful high life: the world’s finest musicians paired with the region’s best wines, enjoyed between meals at the area’s architecturally exquisite estates, vineyard strolls, and test drives of the Bentleys parked on display. On Friday, thanks to the sponsorship of Dede Wilsey, the festival added ballet to its pleasures, with tremendous success. “Stars of American and Russian Ballet” sold out Yountville’s Lincoln Theater.

Sipping some of the world’s best wines, right where they’re cultivated and cultured, is also one of the best ways to take in some of the world’s best small ensemble music, of various vintages. Welcome to Napa Valley’s Music in the Vineyards festival.

Music@Menlo has kicked off its eighth season, bringing a burst of chamber music to the Peninsula. Each summer, esteemed guest artists thrill audiences in the concert hall, but that’s not all. The dream of working with them in the rehearsal studio is what brings top talent to the Chamber Music Institute. Meet the Gray siblings, two such aspiring teen musicians who have journeyed from Illinois for this intensive learning experience.

Composer Jennifer Higdon may have come late to the world of classical music (she famously didn’t start playing a musical instrument until she was in her teens), but she has certainly made up for any lost time. She holds the Milton L. Rock Chair in Composition Studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, she’s in demand as a composer for symphonies and festivals, and her most famous work, blue cathedral, has become an often-performed staple of modern classical music. She returns to the Bay Area in August for the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, where two of her pieces will be featured.

Over the last decade, baritone Richard Paul Fink has become closely associated with the role of Alberich, the malevolent dwarf in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. He’s sung the role in San Francisco, in New York, and, most recently, in three complete Ring cycles at Los Angeles Opera. Now Fink comes to Berkeley Opera to take on a different Ring role, as Wotan in Legend of the Ring. He spoke with SFCV about how he’s preparing to “step up” from chief Nibelung to the king of the gods.

Michael Lawrence's BACH & friends documentary created a big
splash with the audience at the West Coast premiere that took place at
the Sundance Kabuki Theater in San Francisco last Wednesday evening.
Presented by San Francisco Classical Voice as a fundraiser for
the organization, the film about Bach's
impact on music and musicians was greeted with cheers, laughter, and
occasionally, stunned silence from the sold-out crowd.

Bruno Weil’s 19th, and last, season as music director of the Carmel Bach Festival happens, by timely rotation, to include the St. Matthew Passion. Heard Sunday at Carmel’s Sunset Center, this production of the great work was the most satisfying of the many times he has performed it there.

Every year around this time, something remarkable happens in Santa Cruz: The annual Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music convenes, and this sunny beach town best known for its boardwalk becomes a thriving new-music laboratory. Under Music Director Marin Alsop, the two-week festival attracts an impressive array of top composers, musicians, and aficionados eager for a total immersion in the music of our time.

Too often the summer season finds music ensembles going on physical or artistic hiatus, taking an extended vacation or programming concerts heavy on lighter repertory. Not so the San Francisco Choral Society, a symphonic chorus under the musical direction of Robert Geary, which bucks the tide with substantial works by Beethoven and Britten on July 31 and Aug. 1 at San Francisco’s Calvary Presbyterian Church.