Tag archives: Classical Music
Santa Barbara Symphony’s annual Season Kickoff Celebration returns to the Lobero Theatre, located just a few blocks from its home at the Granada, where the esteemed ensemble will launch its seven-concert series next month. The afternoon program on Thursday, September 24, begins at 4:30 pm on the promenade with a no-host reception, where patrons can […]
Changes have been sprouting up fast and furious in the less than three years since Shauna Quill took over at Music Academy of the West as president and CEO, including big turnovers in faculty, some trimming and realignment of the performances and master classes, as well as a staffing reconfiguration, including new Vice President of […]
We’re stretching things to suggest Camerata Pacifica is a community organization. Though it was founded and is still based here, most of the principal players live elsewhere. But tried and true Santa Barbara-via-Ireland import Adrian Spence is still the mastermind, as evidenced by pianist Gilles Vonsattel’s presence at Hahn Hall on April 10 for a […]
Camerata Pacifica’s concert this Friday night at Hahn Hall boasts the world premiere of Natural Light, the ensemble’s latest commissioned work by David Bruce, and a sizable one for wind quintet. Bruce, a prolific contemporary classical music composer, has created imaginative works in both the opera and chamber music idioms. He’s received previous commissions from […]
The Takács Quartet has been in residency at the Music Academy of the West for many years, but their appearance on January 22 as part of the Up Close and Unforgettable series of benefits has taken on added poignancy as cellist András Fejér, the foursome’s sole remaining original member, has announced that he is retiring […]
Thousands turned out in Santa Barbara and across the country for last Saturday’s No Kings rally protesting the increasingly autocratic administration in Washington. So it feels important to point out that there are no kings in the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, meaning no music director, no artistic director, not even a conductor. Everyone who is part […]
For the first time in their long histories, State Street Ballet and Santa Barbara Symphony are opening their season with a collaborative production, one that includes – and closes with – a full-length production of Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet. The concert opens with Maestro Nir Kabaretti and the orchestra performing two short works – Shostakovich’s […]
Camerata Pacifica, the Santa Barbara-based chamber music collective, has an international reputation for both exceptional artistry and laudable century-spanning repertoire. Camerata Pacifica continues to grow apace and now launches its 36th season with eight programs performed at four different venues across Southern California. It’s a fascinating season as it includes the launch of “Beethoven 32,” […]
With the NFL football season launching earlier this month, the Santa Barbara Symphony is hosting a kickoff of their own, a free season preview event on Thursday, September 18, at the at the historic Lobero Theatre. The preview will be jamming with fun, music, and inside info to introduce a season that marks a milestone […]
The Music Academy of the West ended its annual summer festival on a high note at the Granada with the Academy Festival Orchestra, under conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya, playing Mahler’s “Symphony No. 3 in D Minor.” The stellar performance featured Julia Holoman, mezzo-soprano fellow, the children’s troupe Sing! and the Music Academy Women’s Chorus. Stirring stuff… […]
Music Academy of the West’s summer festival and its 100-something event season has moved to the rear-view mirror after last weekend’s triumphant performance of Mahler’s Third at the final Academy Festival Orchestra symphony concert, complete with the MAW women’s chorus (which sprinkled in eight LVI fellows) and the Sing! Children’s Choir. But there’s only a […]
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 […]
Opera Santa Barbara’s new singular focus on performing meticulously crafted works solely at the Lobero Theatre – which Artistic and General Director Kostis Protopapas calls “right-sizing and refocusing on our mission” – brings three works spanning both genres and centuries of operatic repertoire. Pietro Mascagni’s 90-minute Cavalleria Rusticana (November), directed by Layna Chianakas, updates the […]
With its 2025-26 season UCSB Arts & Lectures is now offering more classical music events than any other programming organization from fall to spring, with a full 14 concerts on the slate for their 66th season. Recitals dominate the schedule, with performances from pianists Daniil Trifonov, Víkingur Ólafsson, Van Cliburn Gold Medalist Aristo Sham and […]
Music by and at the Music Academy of the West also returns shortly courtesy of both the third season of its Mariposa Concerts, which feature pre-concert wine receptions before the Hahn Hall performances, and a pair of special intimate fundraising concerts with longtime MAW faculty artists billed as “Up Close & Unforgettable.” Mariposa makes its […]
After the extravagant production of the doom and gloom-infused morality and reckless wreckage-and-punishment tale of Don Giovanni at the Granada in mid-July, things turn a bit frothier and lighthearted with the Music Academy of the West Lehrer Vocal Institute’s performance of one-acts. Stripped down to the bare essentials and staged much more intimately at Hahn […]
Time was, one could reasonably assume that seeing the classic film musical The Music Man would launch a new generation of trombonists (after all, they did lead the big parade, with 110 cornets right behind). Nowadays, not so much. But Music Academy of the West trombone fellow Sarah Roshani Goldberg had a more circuitous, if […]
Opera director Mo Zhou made her Music Academy of the West debut two summers ago with a reimagining of La bohème – from 1830s Paris to Brooklyn in 2011. This weekend, Zhou and the talented MAW vocal and instrumental fellows take on Mozart’s Don Giovanni, with the director moving the time and place from Spain […]
It was an evening of high note when the Music Academy of the West hosted its annual gala for a record 410 guests on the Upper Lawn of the Montecito Club, raising $750,000 to support life-changing programming and the 78th summer festival with 150 fellows, out of 2,000 applicants from 19 countries worldwide. “It helps […]
Dennis Michel still vividly remembers the first time he ever heard the bassoon as a seven-year-old boy growing up on a 480-acre farm in northern Idaho. “Through the magic of television I saw a Leonard Bernstein Young Person’s Concert with the New York Philharmonic, and they had a teenage bassoon soloist for Haydn’s ‘Sinfonia Concertante,’” […]
