With a mix of chamber music, jazz and international styles, the 27th Moab Music Festival will offer its signature grotto concerts, music hikes and raft trips in southern Utah’s redrock country from Aug. 26 to Sept. 12 — with a free Labor Day concert on Monday, Sept. 2, in Old City Park.
The free show, starting at 2 p.m., opens with Venezuela-born flutist Marco Granados and his cuatro trio. Pedro Giraudo and the Tango Quartet will also perform, as will singer/songwriter Kim Hawkey and her band of jazz and multigenre performers, the Elvanelle Band.
(Also free, an open rehearsal at 1 p.m. on Sept. 7 at Star Hall invites guests to see musicians prepare works such as Brahms’ String Sextet No. 2.)
Hawkey and her band also will perform music from the Great American Songbook and beyond at a benefit concert featuring dinner and fireworks on Tuesday, Sept. 3, and music from the 1920s through the ‘40s on Thursday, Sept. 5, at the new HooDoo Moab.
Find listings for the festival’s many offerings at moabmusicfest.org. Some highlights this year:
Home From War • Inspired by the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I, the program includes music from Gustav Mahler and Claude Debussy to Leonard Bernstein and Pete Seeger. Performers will include Andrew Garland, Kara Dugan, pianist Peter Dugan and festival co-founder and music director Michael Barrett on piano. Peter Dugan and Barrett will speak before the concert. Friday, Aug. 30, pre-concert 6 p.m., concert 7 p.m., Star Hall.
Viva Brazil • Brazilian American singer, pianist and composer-in-residence Clarice Assad will team up with her father, guitarist Sergio Assad, and percussionist Keita Ogawa, joined by the MMF strings for a world premiere transcription of her work “Lemuria,” a reflection on climate change and nature. The performance will feature festival cellist Tanya Tomkins, who commissioned the work from Assad. Lemuria is a mythical continent “swallowed up by the seas.” Sunday, Sept. 1, 6 p.m., Red Cliffs Lodge.
A Soldier’s Tale • A new treatment of Igor Stravinsky’s “L’Histoire du Soldat” will be featured in an evening-length performance. Pulitzer and Grammy Award-winning librettist Mark Campbell has put a contemporary spin on the 100-year-old story about a soldier who trades his fiddle to the devil for wealth. The tale also is conveyed through dance; choreographer Joshua Bergasse also directs. The performance will begin with a talk with Campbell, Barrett and several of the performing artists. Sunday, Sept. 8, 7 p.m., Grand County High School.