New Season and Executive Director for Camerata Pacifica
The 34th season for Camerata Pacifica was celebrated with a Director’s Cut event at a private club in Goleta on Monday, September 11. The focus was the formal introduction of its new Executive Director Ana Papakhian by its founder and Artistic Director Adrian Spence. There was also a lovely meet and greet with four of the five musicians performing the September concerts: violinist Paul Huang, violinist Jason Uyeyama (L.A. Philharmonic), violist Timothy Ridout (London),and debutcellist Narek Hakhnazaryan (Armenia). Principal pianist Irina Zahharenkova (Estonia) was currently arriving that evening from Finland.
Spence opened the program and introduced Papakhian, who shared she was happy to have the Director’s Cut members present to meet the musicians and begin the season together. She invited everyone to attend and experience the concerts at the organization’s four different performance venues: The Huntington, San Marino; the Colburn School, Los Angeles; the Scherr Forum, Thousand Oaks; and the Music Academy, Santa Barbara. She thanked the musicians present and explained that due to visa issues, Zahharenkova was delayed to be here in time for the first concert on Sunday, September 10 in Thousand Oaks. The team was able to pivot and secure another pianist who knew the program except for Elgar’s works, which were changed to a work by Schubert; the musicians rehearsed and performed as scheduled. As Zahharenkova will now be here, the program will include Elgar’s “Piano Quintet in A Minor, Op. 84,” for the three concerts this week, along with Beethoven’s “String Trio in D Major, Op. 9, No. 2” and Mozart’s “Piano Sonata in F Major, K. 332.”
Spence followed and talked about the success of their outreach and marketing approach:
“First, I’ve admired Ana since I met her long ago when she worked at the Music Academy; if I could have poached her from them long ago, I would have! I am so happy she is our executive director, and the impact she has is great. With our presence on Facebook, we focused our marketing efforts on our first-time free provision, that is, anyone who is interested to subscribe can attend their first concert free of charge. Because of that, and especially after the lockdowns, we now have 14,000 new subscribers who are mostly a younger and more diverse group than before, bringing the total subscribers to 25,000, up from 6,000. My goal is 100,000! This is going to be a great year for Camerata. Since post-lockdowns, my colleagues and I in the field still feel ticket sales are unpredictable, regardless of programming. However, we at Camerata are bucking the trend, and we sold out all our concerts this week. Thank you so much for your support and looking forward to seeing you at the concerts!”
Attendees included Principal Cello Camerata Pacifica Ani Aznavoorian; Ting-Ru Lai, an international violist (London Symphony Orchestra) and wife of this season’s Camerata Pacifica violist Timothy Ridout; Northrup retired MX Missile program scientist and renowned arts supporter Robert W. Weinman PhD; former Music Academy President (2004-2010) NancyBell Coe; William Burke; Peter and Linda Beuret; Joan Davidson; violinist Maren Henle; flutist Karin Nelson; Eugene Hibbs;pianist and husband to Papakhian Robert Cassidy; Elinor and James Langer; and editor and president of the Orchid Digest Sandra Tillisch-Svoboda.
Guests enjoyed hors d’oeuvres and certified sustainable organic Lumen wines.
