Alfred University’s 2026 MostArts Festival will include a noon performance Friday, July 17, in Holmes Auditorium by musician Dennis James and Crystal City Music, performing his “Mozart’s Musical Curiosities,” which introduces the earliest works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composed between the ages of three and six, while also exploring the childhood beginnings of his musical studies.
The one-hour, visually illustrated Informance Performance presents works ranging from Mozart’s delicate early pieces to late-career music for mechanical clockwork instruments and exotic glass instruments, together with engaging stories connected to each selection.
James will be joined by MostArts Festival violinists Jessica Anthony, Reuben Foley, Audrey Lo and Adam von Hausen.
Since first visiting Alfred University in 2016 as a guest MostArts summer festival chamber music performer, James has emerged as an internationally touring “professional dilettante” described in the Wall Street Journal as “the tall human cousin of a sassy chipmunk.” His popular Musica Curiosa Informance Performance celebrates his eclectic interests in the endless variety of nearly forgotten and always unheralded instrument obscurities from throughout music history. The Informances include authentic historical revival performances of equally peculiar repertoires connected with the instruments.
This free concert will mark the final installment of the Sound Bites Sampler Chamber Music Series for MostArts 2026.
