Vineyard harmony

The San Francisco Piano Trio opens the Music in the Vineyards concert series at the Walt Disney Family Museum

For 17 summers, the annual Music in the Vineyards concert series has staged classical concerts at Napa Valley wineries.

This year, the festival is going farther afield, opening at 2 p.m. Sunday with a performance by the San Francisco Piano Trio at the Walt Disney Family Museum in the Presidio in San Francisco.

Then it’s back to Napa Valley for the remaining three weeks of live concerts, featuring nationally and internationally known musicians.

“Normally you have to come into the Napa Valley to hear us. Now we’re actually exporting our product down to the city,” said Michael Adams, who founded Music in the Vineyards, with his wife, Daria, in 1995.

A prime example of the international flavor of the festival, the San Francisco Piano Trio features German violinist Axel Strauss, French cellist Jean-Michel Fonteneau and American pianist Jeffrey Sykes.

“I’ll be performing with them as well,” said Michael Adams, a violist with the Minnesota Orchestra in Minneapolis. Daria Adams plays violin in the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Both of them serve as artistic directors of Music in the Vineyards.

“This is a really a musical antidote for what my wife and I do during the year, which is play in orchestras,” Adams said. “In orchestras, you lose all control. You’re told what to play and where to sit and when to start and when to stop and what to wear.”