Change your music, change your mind. That’s the slogan adopted by the guitar duo of Michael Newman and Laura Oltman for this year’s Raritan River Music Festival.

Now gearing up for its 27th season, the festival has provided a stimulating mix of new music, world music, jazz, folk, and straightforward classical repertoire, in intimate venues across one the state’s most beautiful regions. Concerts this year will take place in Stockton, Lebanon, Stewartsville and Pittstown.

The couple, which has strong ties to the area – they make their home in lower Warren County along the Delaware River – uses their connections as teachers and performers to draw world-class musicians to semi-rural New Jersey.

This year’s festival will include concerts by the period instrument ensemble La Fiocco (at historic Prallsville Mills in Stockton on May 7), the genre-fluid trio BeBimBop (at Stanton Reformed Church in Lebanon on May 14), a trio made up of pianist Thomas Sauer, violinist Carmit Zori and cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach, being billed as the Sauer-Zori-Gerlach Trio (at Old Greenwich Presbyterian Church in Stewartsville on May 21), and The Newman & Oltman Guitar Duo, with soprano Rochelle Ellis (at Bethlehem Presbyterian Church in Pittstown on May 28).

Raritan River Music has always been the robin redbreast of music festivals, arriving well ahead of the traffic snarl of off-season musical attractions that settle in with the haze of summer. You know what they say about the early bird (and there are discounts for advance sales). Get a leg up by reading my article in today’s Trenton Times:

http://www.nj.com/times-entertainment/index.ssf/2016/04/classical_music_raritan_river.html