Ventura, CA - Ventura Music Festival will present a lineup of top classical and jazz artists to perform May 3-12 for its 18th season at intimate venues throughout Ventura and a family-friendly outdoor setting.

“Artistic excellence is our guide to selecting artists,” says Nuvi Mehta, “Ventura Music Festival consistently brings to Ventura a choice selection of the world’s best classical and jazz music. This season’s array includes career greats as well as rising stars who are winning the top competitions and on their way to outstanding performing careers.”

Slated to appear May 8 at Ventura Missionary Church is the career-distinguished Emerson String Quartet, widely acclaimed the foremost chamber ensemble in the world.

Since its origin in 1976, the Quartet has earned an unparalleled list of achievements, including more than thirty acclaimed recordings, nine Grammy Awards (including two for Best Classical Album, an unprecedented honor for a chamber music group), three Gramophone Awards and the coveted Avery Fisher Prize, another first for a chamber ensemble.

Violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer, violist Lawrence Dutton and cellist David Finckel have been with the group for 33 years. In their signature standing position, they will perform the last quartets of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven for the Festival’s concert.

Each year Ventura Music Festival selects a winner of one of the top international piano competitions for a feature classical piano concert. This year it’s German-born Alexander Schimpf, the 2011 first prize winner of the Cleveland International Piano Competition, one of the world’s most competitive and remunerative contests.

Twenty-nine year-old Schimpf has risen to prominence over the last few years with a series of prestigious awards and regular appearances at important music centers including the Vienna Konzerthaus, Berlin’s Konzerthaus and New York City’s Carnegie Hall.

“Mr. Schimpf is a skilled interpreter of Bach – one of the few artists whose technical excellence allows for Bach’s music to sing through at its purest and most sublime,” says Mehta. Known for his “expressive power and passion” Schimpf will perform Bach, Beethoven and Ravel on May 5 at Ventura Missionary Church.

Fans of Spanish classical guitar will get to hear charismatic virtuoso Pablo Sáinz Villegas on May 11 at Community Presbyterian Church.

Now considered one of the world’s greats, Mr. Villegas, in 2006, captured the Gold Medal at the inaugural Christopher Parkening International Guitar Competition. Mr. Villegas has since performed in more than twenty countries on such prominent stages as New York’s Carnegie Hall, Milan’s Sala Verdi and Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Theater and amassed more than twenty-five international awards. Dubbed “The Soul of the Spanish Guitar,” Villegas will play a program of Bach, Barrios and Rodrigo.

The Festival’s annual afternoon outdoor jazz concert features three-time Grammy-nominated Afro-Cuban jazz combo Tiempo Libre, to take place at 2 p.m. Sunday, May 6 on the Ventura College Green. “This popular concert is perfect for families who want to picnic together and enjoy the outdoors and fine music at the same time,” says Mehta.

Tiempo Libre’s music is a fiercely intense mix of Latin jazz color and danceable Afro-Cuban rhythms, often combined with classical forms ala their “Bach in Havana” recording. As teen-agers growing up in Havana, the group’s future musicians developed their signature timba sound while secretly listening to American music banned during Cuba’s “Special Period.” The enterprising kids rigged up makeshift radios on rooftops with antennas fashioned out of coat hangers. Tiempo Libre was recently featured on “Dancing with the Stars.”

Opening for Tiempo Libre is up-and-coming jazz pianist Alfredo Rodriguez and his trio. Rodriguez was discovered by producer Quincy Jones a few years ago.

The Festival’s annual “Rising Stars” concert on May 10 features 20-year-old, Julliard-trained violin prodigy, Jourdan Urbach, and 14-year-old, award-winning pianist David Fraley. David Fraley is from Camarillo and was introduced first to Ventura Music Festival’s “Rising Star” concert in 2010. Jourdan Urbach, also a former “Rising Star” performer, has already headlined at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, among dozens of other venues, including appearances on the “Today Show,” “Good Morning America” and the “CBS Sunday Morning program.”

Violinist Urbach’s other passion is raising money for pediatric medical research, founding Concerts for a Cure when he was only seven years old. Since then, he has raised $5.1 million for research on children’s neurological disease and on March 6 was honored with the Jefferson “Globe Changer” Award, one of the nation’s highest public service awards.

The Festival will bring classical and jazz genres together in a single concert with saxophonist Federico Mondelci to perform May 4 at Community Presbyterian Church. A powerful performer and master of musical styles ranging from tango to classical, Mr. Mondelci’s Festival “Classical Meets Jazz” program features compositions by Di’Rivera, Creston and Piazzola.

Mondelci has performed regularly in countries all over the globe, such as Germany, Spain, Russia and Japan. In his home country of Italy, he has performed as soloist with all the major orchestras, including the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala at La Scala, Milan.

Closing the season will be international opera sensation and native Venturan, Nicole Cabell, who will perform on May 12 in the acoustically-pristine performing arts auditorium of her alma mater, Ventura High School. This will be Cabell’s second Festival performance, the first in 2008 when she sang to a sold-out audience at the same venue.

With her distinctively creamy, lyrical voice, described by the Times of London as “liquid gold,” and by the Chicago Classical Review as “one of the most beautiful soprano voices of our time,” Ms. Cabell, together with tenor Shawn Mathey, will perform works by Mozart, Shubert, Britten and Gershwin.

Ms. Cabell was the 2005 winner of the BBC Cardiff “Singer of the World” competition, the most prestigious competition in the world of voice. Since then she has garnered rave reviews for engagements across the globe from Vienna to Oslo and New York to London, recently performing at the Royal Opera House of London, Oper Köln, Deutsche Oper of Berlin and the New York City Metropolitan Opera.

A unique aspect of the Festival is Artistic Director Nuvi Mehta himself with his highly entertaining and informative pre-concert “What’s the Score?” talks for select events. Maestro Nuvi weaves fascinating anecdotes from the lives of the program’s composers into the history of the period’s music, delivered in his inimitable, eloquent style.

Ventura Music Festival’s 18th Season, May 3-12 Concert Schedule

• Tea & Trumpets with Festival Brass Quintet: 3 p.m. Friday, May 4, Nona’s Courtyard Café, 67 S. California St.

• Federico Mondelci: 8 p.m., Friday, May 4, Community Presbyterian Church, 1555 Poli St.

• Alexander Schimpf: 8 p.m. Saturday, May 5, Ventura Missionary church, 500 High Point Drive; “What’s the Score?” 7:15 p.m.

• Tiempo Libre: 2 p.m. Sunday, May 6, Ventura College Green, 4667Telegraph Rd.

• Emerson String Quartet: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 8, Ventura Missionary Church, 500 High Point Drive; “What’s the Score?” 6:45 p.m.

• Rising Stars, Jourdan Urbach & David Fraley: 7:30 p.m., Thursday, May 10, First United Methodist Church, 1338 E. Santa Clara St; “What’s the Score?” 6:45 pm.

• Tea & Trumpets with Festival Brass Quintet: 3 p.m. Friday, May 11, Nona’s Courtyard Café, 67 S. California St.

• Pablo Sáinz Villegas: 8 p.m. Friday, May 11, Community Presbyterian Church, 1555 Poli St.

• Nicole Cabell and Shawn Mathey with the Festival Orchestra: 8 p.m. Saturday, May 12, Ventura High Performing Arts Auditorium, 2 N. Catalina St.

For more information about the Festival’s performers and to listen to a music clip of each, go to www.venturamusicfestival.org or call (805) 648.3146.

About Ventura Music Festival

Founded in 1994, Ventura Music Festival brings top classical, jazz and Latin Jazz performing artists to Ventura in early May each year. In addition to the May concerts, the Festival presents other concerts and events throughout the year. The Festival stands as one of Ventura County’s signature arts events, attracting 6,000+ concertgoers annually.

Each year, the Ventura Music Festival’s Education Outreach Program presents live performances and interactive instruction to nearly 4,000 local students through “Music in the Schools” presented by Artistic Director Nuvi Mehta.

The Ventura Music Festival is a non-profit 501 (c) (3) organization.