Your Soundtrack to Summer

The Music Academy of the West season is still a solid six weeks away when 150 fellows will arrive on the Miraflores campus in Montecito and, alongside 60 faculty members, collaborate in creating a truly astonishing slate of events over the otherwise fallow months on the classical calendar. 

There are nearly 125 in-person opportunities in all following along its theme “Soundtrack to Summer,” including orchestral and chamber programs, masterclasses, competitions and other concerts and events. Individual tickets for the entire roster of events June 15 to August 9 go on sale on May 1. What makes this year more exciting than most – besides the continuing and seemingly ceaseless uptick in the abilities of the young musicians – is that this summer represents the first festival fully programmed by Chief Artistic Officer Nate Bachhuber, who joined MAW in February 2024 – after that summer’s season had already been set, and just three months after the arrival of new President & CEO Shauna Quill. 

“This summer represents the vision that we’ve learned in the past year – the vision of classical music as both timeless and evolving,” Bachhuber said. “The basis is the core of what this organization has been about, but there are a number of things that are new.”

Chief among those is a moderate remaking of the faculty. Fourteen of the 60 teaching artists – just shy of 25 percent – are new for 2025, including two MAW alums in cellist Julie Albers (1998), principal with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, William Short (2007-08), principal bassoonist of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and an even more familiar face in cellist Ani Aznavoorian, the longtime principal of Camerata Pacifica. Other newcomers include principals at the LA Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestra, and concertmasters of the Minnesota Orchestra and Atlanta Symphony.

“The faculty are truly the heartbeat of everything we do at the Music Academy,” Bachhuber said. “These are not just world-class musicians, but they’re mentors who love working with young musicians and recognize that every fellow has their own unique goals and is on their own unique path.”

Bachhuber and other administrative members spent part of last festival talking with both teaching artists and fellows to create a collaborative document that details MAW’s teaching philosophy along those lines, he said. 

“What excites me most about the evolution this summer is those new teaching artists and how they strengthen our ability to provide fellow-centered learning,” Bachhuber said. “One of the primary things that helps us to maintain the legacy of this institution while evolving artistic integrity is evolving how we guide fellows to integrate technique and expression to convey their musical ideas authentically. Today’s fellows need more than just technical excellence. They need to be creative, collaborative and connected to the broader world.”

What’s also shifted, at least somewhat, is a renewed interest in off-campus programming. This follows a few years of pointedly retrenching events at Miraflores while cutting back on concerts at the Lobero, and elsewhere in the community. 

“We’re working to make a deliberate effort to meet our community where they are,” Bachhuber said. “We have this beautiful campus, of course, and we invite everyone to come and experience music here. But we also know that we need to find more people who might be impacted by the experiences and transformative power of the fellows making music.”

To that end, not only has the annual percussion festival moved from Hahn Hall to the five-fold larger Granada Theatre downtown – complete with a performance and composition by rock legend Stewart Copeland and Grammy-nominated composer and Mosher Guest Artist Andy Akiho – but there’s also a free brass concert at the newly renovated Plaza del Mar Band Shell and a special orchestral performance of John Williams’ score for Jaws simulcast with the film screening to celebrate the iconic summer movie’s 50^th Anniversary. 

The latter is as much for the fellows as the audience.

“We want to prepare the fellows for the careers that they’re going to have,” Bachhuber said. “For those who aren’t going to win the principal jobs, there’s a great career to be made playing in the studios for TV and film. Let’s have them do it here in a safe space so they don’t have their first experience playing with a film when they’re under tenure review.”

Diving even deeper into the composition of the community is a family-friendly performance of Prokovief’s Peter and the Wolf (Pedro y el Lobo) in both English and Spanish at the Lobero. 

“We wanted to make sure that it can be enjoyed regardless of whether your first language is English or Spanish,” Bachhuber said. “We’re recognizing where we are and who the community is.” 

As always, there are far too many worthy events to detail here and now. But watch this space during festival times for weekly preview interviews with artists and a curated calendar of the upcoming week’s highlights.