Kabaretti Era Turns 20 

The Santa Barbara Symphony marks a major milestone with its 2025-26 season as Music & Artistic Director Nir Kabaretti notches his 20th year at the helm – which translates to his SBS tenure accounting for more than a quarter of its 72-year history. The typically diverse series of seven concerts begins with a joint season-opening collaboration with State Street Ballet in October featuring scenes from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet and SBCC’s Brass Band for Shostakovich’s “Festive Overture.” The Symphony also has a Beethoven bonanza for piano lovers in January’s concert pair, where promising pianists of the future will tackle all five of the composer’s concertos. The Beethoven Piano Concerto Marathon showcases the rising virtuosos who have each claimed the top prize at international competitions over the past year, including Min Joo Yi, selected as the winner of the 2025 Music Academy Solo Piano Concerto Competition in June, who will perform “Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 37.”

In November, acclaimed trombonist Christian Lindberg joins principal trombonist Dillon MacIntyre for the area premiere of Andrea Tarrodi’s “Double Trombone Concerto,” which was co-commissioned by The Symphony, while accordionist Hanzhi Wang, a frequent Santa Barbara visitor who made her local debut at Hahn Hall in 2020, returns in March to shine on Cristian Carrara’s Red Ferrari concerto. Also of note: the newly formed Santa Barbara Symphony Chorus, which debuted just last spring, also takes the stage in November for Mozart’s “Requiem”and helps to bring emotional closure to the season finale, Mahler’s monumental “‘Resurrection’ Symphony No. 2.”