Cory Pesaturo remains the youngest person to win the National Accordion Championships almost 25 years after he achieved the feat in 2002. He’s the only one to ever claim the Triple Crown of World Championships, notching victories on Acoustic, Digital, and Jazz Accordion. Pesaturo was the first musician ever to major and graduate in the […]
No introduction to speak of. No words of explanation from the musicians. No mentioning which paintings or sculptures inspired them to choose their piece(s) to perform. Just a few words from the Music Academy staff before and after the first of three events in the galleries of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, dubbed, with […]
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The Music Academy of the West’s astonishing guest composer series reaches its crescendo with this pair of weekend performances of Kevin Puts’ annually produced opera Elizabeth Cree, from MAW’s Lehrer Vocal Institute. The one-act opera Elizabeth Cree is a macabre gothic thriller adapted from Peter Ackroyd’s similarly titled book. Set in Victorian times, it serves […]
Composer Jasmine Arielle Barnes most deservedly received that enthusiastic standing ovation at the Lobero – and hugs from star singer Sasha Cooke – following the world premiere of her orchestration of American Lament, her celebrated song cycle. The suite centers around a (somehow) still incredibly timely 1935 Langston Hughes poem “Let America Be America Again”; […]
Back in 2016, Baltimore native Jasmine Barnes was preparing for her senior recital at Morgan State University. But then fellow African American Freddie Gray was murdered by six Baltimore policemen, who left him unsecured in the back of a van during an erratic drive downtown, causing fatal injuries to his spinal cord. “The riots broke […]
James McMurtry found critical and commercial success early in his career when his song “Painting by Numbers,” from his John Mellencamp-produced 1989 debut album Too Long in the Wasteland, connected with disaffected members of America’s heartland and became an MTV video hit. He’s been on the road ever since, almost incessantly touring northwards of 100 […]
Friday, July 10: After a stirring introduction to the Lehrer Vocal Institute singers for 2026 last week, the vocal season shifts into full swing as the season’s major events rapidly approach. Today, it’s a masterclass with Paul Curran, whose credits include directing productions across the world with opera companies ranging from the Met, Los Angeles, […]
If you’ve never heard – or even heard of – Jimmie Dale Gilmore, all you need to know is what one journalist wrote about the West Texas singer-songwriter many years ago: “His voice would make even Hank Williams cry.” Which makes a lot of sense, since the now 81-year-old Gilmore patterned his fragile, high-lonesome tenor […]
Does music sound better in the great outdoors, or is it just the ambience that adds something special? Does it matter? Not so much when it comes to Santa Barbara’s enormously popular weekly series, which get a new entry this season in a more sporadic format by the beach. The first show of the summer […]
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By the time Peruvian-born Conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya finishes his residency at the Music Academy of the West early next month, he will have conducted the last three concerts in a row as part of the Academy’s summer season. Harth-Bedoya closed out the 2025 festival last August leading the by then well-seasoned Academy Festival Orchestra in […]
The Music Academy could have brought Jeffrey Kahane to town to conduct an Academy Festival Orchestra concert, engaging the former longtime leader of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (or LACO, which appeared at the Granada under his baton for CAMA back in 2015) to conduct the fellows in the middle of the summer. Instead, Kahane […]
The Music Academy of the West‘s 2026 Summer Music Festival is the Montecito-based institute’s 79th season, an eight-week celebration full of world-class performances, high-level education, and far-reaching programming that ranges from full 100-member orchestral concerts to chamber music events featuring solo, duo and larger ensembles. Over the course of more than 100 events, the repertoire […]
“At Bakersfield College in the ‘70s, Charles put together and choreographed a whole program of those songs that had made Sinatra famous. The marching band played it at the football game on Friday nights. Everybody went to those football games.” Charles Wood III – jazz fiend, music educator, instrumental proselytizer, and a catalyzing match tossed […]
John C. Reilly is the very versatile character actor whose roles have found him navigating everything from comedy and drama to musical theater and more, even as his utterly unique persona remains charming and compelling throughout. Among some of his more memorable roles are collaborations the Paul Thomas Anderson film Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, and […]
