CNN Living article "Wine, Wedding and Song",2007, talks about the founder of festival Del Sole philanthropist Barrett Wissman. In 2011 cellist Nina Kotova was presented an award for her outstanding cultural contribution to Tuscany from the Tuscan-American Association as a co-founder of the Tuscan Sun Festival. Nina Kotova co-founded the Tuscan Sun Festival in 2003 and its sister-festival Festival Del Sole in Napa Valley in 2006 and served as the Artistic Director of the Tuscan Sun Festival (also known as the Festival del Sole) in Cortona, Italy.

1. Wine,weddingandsong STORYHIGHLIGHTS
Next in a growing series of arts festivals opens Saturdayin Cortona, Italy
Napa Valley's Festival del Sole staged more than 50 events in nine days
Wineries engage in friendlyrivalries, throwing lavish after-concert galas
International artists cite chances to meet each other, communityamong lures
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art.vineyard.jpg
Napa Valley'svineyardsare one of three sitesin an
expanding networkof international cultural summits.
Fact Box
Del Sole Foundation Festivals
Cortona, Italy
Tuscan Sun Festival
August 4-16
Singapore
Singapore Sun Festival
October 18-30
NapaValley, California
Festival del Sole
July 11-20, 2008
NAPA, California (CNN) -- If Barrett Wissman were
in the ministry, his arts festivals would be sunny
outposts on a fast-widening mission field. His
Tuscan Sun Festival opens Saturdayin Cortona,
Italy. An all-new Singapore Sun Festival opens
October 18.
And a secret known to missionaries everywhere is
clearlyin swayat the Festival del Sole in Napa
Valley, which has just concluded its second year:
Bonding with the locals.
With quick fervor, local leaders, the hospitality
industryand those all-important vintners of Napa
have embraced their festival.
When symphonyconductor Stéphane Denève
mentioned last year that he'd like to get married
there, Tatiana and Gerret Copeland of the
Bouchaine wine estate threw the ceremonyfor
them in the vineyards.
See images from a maestro's marriage in the vineyards of Napa during this year's Festival del Sole »
"It's a mission in mylife to have more and more people enjoyand love the arts," Wissman says in an
interview sandwiched between Denève's presentation of the Grieg piano concerto and Prokofiev's "Romeo
and Juliet" suite with the Russian National Orchestra.
Watch highlights and comments from Barrett Wissman and the artists of Festival del Sole »
"One of the reasons that we have these festivals -- engage local communities and have music, literature,
art, film, cuisine, wine, all these subjects -- is we attract different people who like each one. And then get
them to like something else. Today, our goal in education in the arts is to get everybodyinvolved."
Wissman is uniquelypositioned to "get everybodyinvolved."
More than a priest or even a bishop in this arts-mission field, he's a cardinal in the industry, the chairman of
IMGArtists, a major player in world artists' representation. IMG's roster includes violinists Joshua Bell and
Itzhak Perlman, mezzo-soprano Fredericka von Stade, flutist James Galway, guitarist Christopher
Parkening, the JoffreyBallet and composer JayGreenberg, among manyothers.
Wissman has just announced a new managing director for IMGin North and South America, Elizabeth
Sobol. She is, herself, a co-producer of a new festival in Boca Raton, Florida, and architect of a highly
publicized new joint venture for IMGwith Gorfaine-Schwartz, the agencyrepresenting trumpeter-composer
Chris Botti, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, singer-songwriter James Taylor and Hollywood film composer John Williams.
No matter how far-flung the festivals and events, Wissman stays near his roots. "I'm a pianist," he says, "a
concert pianist. I still play, I playfrom time to time in the festivals. So I'm a musician, I come from the arts."
In the case of Napa's Festival del Sole, Wissman has a co-founder, San Francisco-based attorneyRichard
Walker, who has a specialization in artists' management.
Watch an audio slide show in which Richard Walker talks about the atmosphere of the festival »
Having worked with Mikhail Pletnev's Russian National Orchestra, Walker says, since its inception in 1990
as the first symphonic entityfounded after the Soviet Union's collapse, he emphasizes the stylistic range
demanded in festival work.
And Walker echoes Wissman's interest in making these festivals oases in the itinerant lives of world-
traveling artists. "The events that surround the musical performances," Walker says, "are attended bythe
artists, themselves -- a time of camaraderie for them because theysee each other and spend time enjoying
each other's company."
As if on cue, two world-class pianists, Polish-Hungarian Piotr Anderszewski and French-born Jean-Yves
Thibaudet, are seated at the same table at a gala post-concert dinner held byFar Niente wine estate on a
cloudless night in a circular arbor crowded with honeysuckle. Thibaudet jumps up at one point to
accompanyviolinist Bell in Manuel Ponce's "Estrellita," watched bycomposer Marco Tutino and cellist Nina
Kotova. Readabout Joshua Bell's recent winof the $75,000 Fisher Prize
"We are located in a wonderful hotel," says conductor Denève, the
newlywed whose base of operations is Glasgow where he is music
director of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. "Wonderful
swimming pool, actuallyit's a great wayto socialize and get to know
more and more the fellow artists because usuallyyou are engaged
and just have one or two nights."
Thibaudet places a similar premium on these festivals' sense of
communityfor artists. "When we have concerts," he says, "we just
come into town, we playand we leave. Usuallythere won't be anyother
soloists, there's onlyyou. So we never get to meet each other during
the year."
And it appears that the Napa communitycouldn't be happier than to
find these major concert and recording artists "working the valley."
In a kind of vine-roots, if not grassroots, effort, the wineries have
jumped with endearing eagerness into what Walker terms a "friendlycompetition" for whose after-concert
updated 12:46p.m. EDT, Wed August 1, 2007
READ VIDEO PHOTOS INTERACTIVE
By Porter Anderson
CNN
more photos»
Living » Food Relationships Religion U.S. Edition +  menu

2. Don't Miss
Festivals: Del Sole Foundation
IMGArtists
JoshuaBell: Fisher Prize
gala can be the most opulent.
Theylayon rich dinners set at starlit tables, some byglowing pools, others on cricket-chirpyhilltops and
still others under chandeliers hung high in some of the most honored wine-making facilities in the country.
One of the venues for the festival this year has been the Medieval-looking Castello di Amorosa, another the
renovated Lincoln Theatre in Yountville.
Wineries participating in special events around an intenselyproud sponsorship of the festival have
included Far Niente, the Copelands' Bouchaine Vineyards, Darioush Winery, Clos Pegase, Robert Mondavi
Winery, Peju Province Winery, Pine Ridge Wineryand St. SupéryVineyards and Winery. Manyof these are
festival-funding partners, joined byDomaine Chandon, Blackbird Vineyards, Dalla Valle Vineyards,
Plumpjack Winery, Folio Winemakers' Studio, Gargiulo Vineyards, Swanson Vineyards and COPIA, a
nonprofit center of wine-making culture in the valley.
The vintners, themselves, seem to enjoythe chance to mingle in the
common interest of the festival and in the companyof these artists they
seem to be tying onto their hearts like vine tendrils in their fields.
Margrit Mondavi is a welcome guest one evening at Far Niente, as are
Tatiana and Gerret Copeland of the Bouchaine house.
Florence's Maria Manetti Farrow, whose ranging Villa Mille Rose is an influential olive oil estate, seems to
be everyone's fondest table mate and everyartist's favorite dinner companion.
Resort partners include Auberge du Soleil, Calistoga Ranch, Solage Calistoga, the Carneros Inn and
Silverado Resort.
Walker, in fact, estimates that the Napa festival -- which with Cortona and Singapore is produced bythe
nonprofit Del Sole Foundation for the Arts and Humanities -- could cost as much as $10 million to stage, if
the manyin-kind services provided byhoteliers, wineries and others were totaled in cash.
The "rehearsals" for all this, if you will, took place in Cortona, where Wissman and Charles Letourneau,
executive producer, have staged several years of festival events in what Wissman likes to call "a magical,
Fellini-esque feel."
When he looked for a spot in the United States to base a sister festival, "Napa was the perfect place," close
to the metropolitan pace of San Francisco but removed enough to shelter artists and audiences in peace.
Wissman looks across a long, candlelit table amid shadowygreat
barrels of Bouchaine wine. French conductor Denève has Tatiana
Copeland's dinner guests in stitches with his tale of how he proposed
to his new wife on the glass floor high atop the Canada's National Tower in Toronto -- "MyGod, it was
frightening!"
"One has to lead," says Wissman, Cortona's Saturdayopening alreadyoccupying his thoughts. "When
doing something important. No matter what your job is, no matter what your work is, you have to lead."
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Official sponsorsof the 2007 Festival de Sole include Auberge Resorts, Bouchaine Vineyards, Boucheron, Grove Street
Winery/Peter Paul Wines, Napa Valley Vintnersand XOJet.
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