A Wonderful Week at MA

The final weeks of the Music Academy’s 76th annual Summer Festival have been the icing on the classical cake!

Principal players with the London Symphony Orchestra showed their prowess at Lehmann Hall when they performed chamber works by Britten, Villa-Lobos, Perivolaris, Salzedo, Hahn, and Haydn with flutist Gareth Davies, cellist David Cohen, violinist Clare Duckworth, trombonist Peter Moore, and pianist Margaret McDonald.

Hahn Hall, a tiara’s toss down the road, was the next venue for Cabaret, not a reprise of Bob Fosse’s Berlin-based 1972 film with Joel Grey, Michael York, and Liza Minnelli, but a 1979 production in L.A.’s Laurel Canyon with James Darrah returning to the Miraflores campus to co-produce with music director Craig Terry.

The highly entertaining show, with evocative costumes by Molly Irelan and creative work by projection designer Adam Larsen, revisited the legendary singer-songwriters of that iconic era including Jackson Browne, Johnny Cash, Sonny Bono, Carole King, Lionel Richie, Joni Mitchell, John Denver, Elton John, John Williams, Stevie Nicks, Leonard Cohen, and the late Santa Barbara icon David Crosby.

Go-go boots and hot pants were de rigueur!

The week wrapped at the weekend with the Academy Festival Orchestra under JoAnn Falletta, 69, the first woman to lead a major American ensemble as music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, played Roberto Sierra’s “Fandangos” to Ravel’s “La Valse,” wrapping the top-notch concert with Rachmaninoff’s “Symphonic Dances.”

Multi Grammy-winner Falletta, also artistic adviser to the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra, was named as one of the 50 greatest conductors, past and present, by Gramophone magazine.

And no wonder…