Tag archives: Music Academy of the West

More from MAW
By Steven Libowitz   |   August 19, 2025

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 […]

MAW: Something to Sing About
By Steven Libowitz   |   August 12, 2025

The end is here. Just three more days remain in the Music Academy of the West’s 2025 Summer Music Festival. But there are still nine events to choose from, including master classes in Bassoon, Violin, Trombone & Tuba, Lehrer Vocal Institute songbirds on Thursday, August 7, and Oboe and Solo Piano on Friday, August 8. Thursday […]

Love, Laughter, and Dialogues
By Steven Libowitz   |   August 5, 2025

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 […]

It’s Okay to Toot Your Own Horn
By Steven Libowitz   |   July 29, 2025

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 […]

‘Don Giovanni’ in Tinseltown
By Steven Libowitz   |   July 22, 2025

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 […]

A Night of Note(s)
By Richard Mineards   |   July 22, 2025

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 […]

Pingel’s Purview: Miles, Mozart, Metallica and the Music Academy
By Steven Libowitz   |   July 15, 2025

It’s a good bet that, unlike Scott Pingel, none of the other Music Academy of the West teaching artists on campus this summer have played a concert with the mega-selling rock band Metallica – or for that matter, any concert in front of some 20,000 people.  It was back in September 2019 that double bassist […]

Havin’ a Ball with Bassoon
By Steven Libowitz   |   July 8, 2025

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,’” […]

The AFO with Goosby
By Steven Libowitz   |   July 1, 2025

Violinist Randall Goosby, the first Mosher Guest Artist of the summer, will have already performed his MAW recital by the time this issue hits newsstands, but there’s still an opportunity to hear the 2022 Avery Fisher Career Grant recipient – which he was awarded at age 25 – in the June 28 Academy Festival Orchestra […]

You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Band
By Steven Libowitz   |   June 24, 2025

Great White sharks are known to patrol the waters off Santa Barbara and even the coastline on a regular basis – an occasionally toothy swim zone barely a few hundred yards away from the Music Academy’s Miraflores campus. Tonight’s opening concert –by the fellows-powered Academy Festival Orchestra (AFO) – takes place Saturday night at the […]

Having a Lark on Stage
By Richard Mineards   |   June 3, 2025

The Music Academy of the West’s Hahn Hall was totally energized when UCSB Arts & Lectures hosted captivating violinist Tessa Lark in her Santa Barbara debut with pianist Amy Yang, director of chamber music and piano studies at the Curtis Institute of Music. Béla Bartók’s “Romanian Folk Dances” kicked off the concert also featuring Eugène […]

Your Soundtrack to Summer
By Steven Libowitz   |   May 6, 2025

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 […]

Listen to This “Soundtrack to Summer”
By Richard Mineards   |   April 1, 2025

Now in its 78th season, the Music Academy of the West’s annual summer festival, which runs from June 15 to August 9, offers an unparalleled blend of world class performances and musical discovery. Themed “Soundtrack to Summer,” the mega event showcases international artists performing alongside 150 of the academy’s gifted young musicians and 60 esteemed […]

yMusic Rocks
By Richard Mineards   |   March 25, 2025

Hahn Hall at the Music Academy of the West was socially gridlocked for the Mariposa series of yMusic featuring trumpeter alumni CJ Camerieri performing a new work inviting listeners to commune with the fragile beauty of natural worlds. A new score, a blend of acoustic performance, featured raw and personal field recordings with California composer […]

‘Why Not?’ Leads yMusic to Contemporary Pinnacle 
By Steven Libowitz   |   March 11, 2025

CJ Camerieri has done pretty well for himself since spending a single summer as a trumpet fellow at the Music Academy of the West in 2002. The Juilliard grad who also plays French horn, arranges, produces and composes, not only co-founded the contemporary classical ensemble yMusic in 2008, but is perhaps even better known as […]

A Match Made in Mozart
By Steven Libowitz   |   February 18, 2025

The London Symphony Orchestra’s initial partnership with the Music Academy of the West officially came to its pandemic-paused close a couple of summers ago. But the relationship between the two classical music institutions continues with a three-event, two-day residency starting on February 17. President’s Day kicks off at 1 pm with a violin master class […]

Local Nonprofits Announce New Board Members
By Joanne A Calitri   |   February 11, 2025

Your trusty Society reporter is here with the new board members appointed to your favorite nonprofits. The Music Academy of the West, now in its 78th season, has three new officers and four new members appointed to its Board of Directors. The new Board Officers are Board Chair Danner Schefler, Vice Chair Susan Lichtenstein,and Secretary […]

Denk, Denim, and Diamonds
By Richard Mineards   |   February 11, 2025

It was an evening of many facets at the Music Academy of the West when it hosted a Denk, Denim and Diamonds gala which attracted more than 100 guests and raised around $50,000 for the Miraflores oceanside campus. Drinks on the terrace outside Lehmann Hall kicked off the sunset soirée before supporters filed into the […]

Celebrating Donald McInnes
By Richard Mineards   |   January 21, 2025

The life of Donald McInnes, Camerata Pacifica’s first principal violist, was celebrated at the Music Academy of the West’s Lehmann Hall. McInnes, who studied at the academy from 1954 to 1956 and was a member of the faculty from 1982 to 2012, died in October at his home in Rancho Mirage aged 85. The UCSB […]

Music Academy CUP Updates at Land Use Meeting
By Joanne A Calitri   |   December 17, 2024

The Montecito Association Land Use Committee (LUC) December meeting was held Tuesday, December 3, in person at the Montecito Library community room and on Zoom. The meeting was called to order by its Chair, Dorinne Lee Johnson. Attendees were the Land Use Committee members, MA ED Houghton Hyatt, President Doug Black, Music Academy of the […]