Shinners Will Shine with New Award for Music Academy
While we were busy with winter rains and staring at stars strolling down the red carpet for SBIFF at the Arlington, the Music Academy – Montecito’s great claim to fame in the classic music world – has been brewing up some bright new things.
Make that the Music Academy of the West. Thankfully, the strange and misguided decision to lop off the qualifier two years ago is being reversed under the new administration of Shauna Quill, President & Chief Executive Officer, and a revamped Board of Directors. In addition to clearing up a self-imposed nebulousness, the name reversion lets us journos once again use the abbreviation MAW to refer to the Academy – MA just didn’t cut it.
On the musical front, MAW has established a brand-new annual Alumni Performance Award (APA), sponsored by the Luria/Budgor Family Foundation, to provide a unique performance opportunity that embraces the artist’s pursuits while aligning with the Music Academy’s goals and vision for alumni engagement. Open to all alumni, the annual award will support an emerging Music Academy alum in their present professional pursuits as a performing artist.
The inaugural recipient of the APA is the solo pianist Evan Shinners, who set the Miraflores campus on metaphorical fire during his summer in 2009 and has gone on to become one of the more dedicated and passionate keyboardists around, one who has purposefully trained his focus almost entirely on Bach. Juilliard grad Shinners’ innovative Bach Store pop-up project, which turned an empty Manhattan storefront into a publicly accessible workspace for Shinners five-hours-a-day practice sessions and a concert stage each evening, was supported by a $20,000 MAW grant as one of its inaugural Alumni Enterprise Awards, several years ago.
“The Music Academy was my coming-of-age novel,” Shinners shared over the phone from London last weekend. “I discovered a wonderful community of musicians and patrons I am still friends with, and lots of literature. It was a very eventful summer for me.”
The new award provides a grant of $10,000 and up to $3,000 for expenses related to the associated performance.
“It’s absolutely very special and unique, because it wasn’t something I applied for,” Shinners said. “It just came out of the blue.”
Shinners’ awarded performance opportunity takes place on February 24, where he will perform in solo recital as well as in a trio with two other Music Academy artists in the galleries of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
The event is also a fundraiser for the museum as part of its Artful Affairs: Seasons of Change. Midwinter Night’s Dream will have guests experiencing how four pieces of art selected from the SBMA collection inspire design, exquisite menu tastings, music and more, billed as an experiential journey through elevated hors d’oeuvres and imaginative cocktails. Shinners will perform solo as well as with cello alum Katrina Agate and flutist Erin McKibben, the director of Sing!
“The four pieces of art are from completely different cultures, and I’ll be playing both harpsichord and piano,” Shinners said of the pieces he will perform solo. “The idea is that I go in front of the paintings and become inspired by them and then play something. I’m excited, but it’s complicated for me. I’m looking forward to it because I’ve just started doing the improvising thing in public, and it’s been a while since I’ve made a meaningful connection between music and painting. So I’ll be spending some time there beforehand.”
The original idea had been to arrange a Bach Store in Santa Barbara, but given Shinners’ loaded schedule and the short timing of the initial award, that concept had to be shelved, at least for now. (Think 2025 for that to happen.) But Bach Stores – which will debut in Germany and Switzerland later this year – and the multiple expressions of the composer himself, continue to fascinate Shinners to no end.
“Right now, I’m playing the pipe organ all the time and playing figured bass, and so I feel like I’m actually in kindergarten again,” he said.
Elsewhere in the MAW world, the 2024 gala has been scheduled for June 1, with the singular cellist, composer and curator Joshua Roman in the house. We don’t yet have any details on what Roman – who attended the summer festival back in 2002 and has curated some programs here in the interim, as well as brought music to bars and other unusual spaces – may have in mind for the big fundraising event, but we’re sure it’ll be the kind of fascinating and innovative program Roman is known for. Tables go on sale March 1.
