This year’s Music in the Vineyards line-up promises both excitement and fun, presented in the casual, friendly style that has become a hallmark of the 14-year-old chamber music festival.

Once again, more than three dozen leading musicians from around the country will make Napa Valley their home as they rehearse and perform at various wineries, the Jarvis Conservatory and Meadowood.

The popular free open rehearsals will again take place at the St. Helena campus of Napa Valley College, on Aug. 7 and 21, 2 to 4 p.m.

And this year’s three-week festival has some new features as well:

For the first time, musical directors Michael and Daria Adams have added a family concert aimed at attracting younger listeners, with special pricing for all tickets.

In another first, the festival will have its own composer-in-residence. The youngest winner of the Pulitzer Prize for composition, Aaron Jay Kernis will bring four of his works to the festival’s final week, introducing them in concert and performing, on piano, his latest commission during the season finale.

Another classical-music star, the Minnesota Orchestra’s musical director Osmo Vanska, will step from behind his conducting podium to perform on clarinet during the festival’s first week.

Pianists Randall Hodgkinson, Garrick Ohlsson and Jeffrey Sykes — the musical director for last year’s festival — and guitarist David Tanenbaum are also scheduled to perform.

Concert highlights include a program titled “‘Degenerates:’ Composers Blacklisted by the Nazis,” and four evenings devoted to composers from specific regions: “Good to the Finnish,” “Romantics from the Land of the Midnight Sun,” “Italian Passions” and “Fiery Spaniards.” A program titled “A Love Song from Brahms” will include music by Bernhard Henrik Crusell, often called the “Swedish Mozart.”

These are not concerts that require a lot of dressing up: Music in the Vineyards’ board and staff pride themselves on producing events where anyone can feel comfortable in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt.

“We’re an approachable music festival,” said Natasha Biasell, the festival’s public-relations director. “That’s really what makes us different than any other chamber festival. We’re not uppity.”

Biasell continued, “Our venues are all small, and we want them to be that way. We’re not in big concert halls, people don’t dress up. It’s not what people might think of the typical classical music concert.”

After all, music is entertainment as well as art — as master of ceremonies Michael Adams demonstrates with his well-informed, yet witty commentaries that often leave his audiences laughing.

And those audiences will include some younger faces this year: Music in the Vineyards is working with the Napa Valley Youth Symphony to bring young musicians to some of the concerts, while a special afternoon event at Meadowood is dedicated to families.

Aug.  17 at 2 p.m., the hour-long family concert will feature the Dr. Seuss story “Gertrude McFuzz,” set to music by Robert Kapilow (who also scored the good Dr.’s “Green Eggs and Ham”) and performed by a group including soprano Vera Mariner.

With this show, Music in the Vineyards hopes to attract not only youngsters but their parents, offering tickets at $10 for children and $20 for adults 18 and older.

As with many arts groups, much of the festival’s core audience is over 50, said Music in the Vineyards’ executive director Evie Ayers.

“We thought it’s our responsibility to do something to attract younger people and the younger people have children, so why not have them and their children come to the concert?” she said.

This year’s festival will kick off Aug. 6 at Beringer Vineyards, where the Peabody Trio will perform works by Schubert, Janacek and Thierry de Mey. The final concert is Aug. 24 at Markham Vineyards, followed by a closing-night dinner party for the musicians at Meadowood.

Tickets to all evening concerts are $50; the Aug. 24 buffet at Meadowood is $125. For more information, visit musicinthevineyards.org or call 258-5559.