It’s almost unbelievable. It’s been nearly six decades since Steppenwolf scored its first hit single with the generation-defining rock anthem “Born to Be Wild,” and only now is there a documentary film about the band. As it is, the 2024 film Born to Be Wild: The Story of Steppenwolf won’t yet be available at cinemas […]
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 […]
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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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Lucinda Lane, the self-described “IndieBossaJazzTwang” band that has singer Nicole Lvoff and songwriter-guitarist (and music journo) Joe Woodard as its core members, often appears as a duo at various venues around town. But their gig at SOhO on July 21 vastly expands the universe by adding the rhythm section of bassist Jim Connolly and drummer […]
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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 […]
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,’” […]
Westmont alumnus Paul Mori (‘77) directs the Prime Time Band’s free Fourth of July Concert, presented by the Pierre Claeyssens Veterans Foundation, on Friday, July 4th, at 5 pm at the Santa Barbara Courthouse Sunken Gardens. Guests are encouraged to bring a blanket or low-back chair. The performance will feature an afternoon of lively music […]
The buzz of background conversations and tinkling of cups and silverware were the soundtrack when Andy Akiho picked up the phone last Friday at noon. Not surprisingly, the percussionist-composer was in a coffeehouse in Portland – where he lives when he’s not in New York – but he wasn’t just picking up a cup of […]
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 […]
