Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Paul Moravec will be composer-in-residence at the 2007 Port Townsend Chamber Music Festival, working closely with college, adult, and emerging-professional composers. Moravec, whose composition Tempest Fantasy will be performed at the Festival by Trio Solisti (the very ensemble that he wrote it for) and clarinetist Alan Kay, has had over a dozen CDs performed of his work, and has composed several dozen chamber, choral, and orchestra works.

It is Tempest Fantasy, a meditation on the motifs and characters of Shakespeare's play The Tempest, that has garnered Moravec much recent acclaim.

"Tempest Fantasy has," Moravec notes, "everything to do with Shakespeare and nothing to do with Shakespeare."

Moravec originally wrote a violin-and.jpgano piece called Ariel's Fantasy. (In the play, Ariel is a light-hearted messenger sprite.) When violinist Maria Bachmann, of Trio Solisti, first heard the music, she loved its energy and color, and encouraged Moravec to develop it into a complete half-hour piece.

Trio Solisti gave the world premiere performance of Tempest Fantasy. On Friday, August 10, at 7:30 pm, at the Port Townsend Chamber Music Festival, Trio Solisti, together with clarinetist Alan Kay, will perform all five movements of Tempest Fantasy: "Ariel," "Prospero," "Caliban," "Sweet Airs," and "Fantasia."