All That and MAW

It couldn’t have been a more perfect evening when the Music Academy of the West threw its annual gala at the impeccably manicured Miraflores campus with 300 guests raising around $750,000 for its scholarship fund and community initiatives.

After quaffing cocktails in the garden, the music lovers repaired to Hahn Hall for a 90-minute concert conducted by energized English dynamo Nicholas McGegan, director of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chorale in San Francisco for 32 years.

The program, which featured Metropolitan Opera graduate bass-baritone Brandon Cedel, New York Philharmonic violinist Frank Huang, violist Cynthia Phelps, a faculty member, and Grammy-nominated soprano Brenda Rae, included works by Rossini, Handel, Mozart, Britten, and Bernstein, but the undoubted highlight was Micah McLaurin on piano playing an extremely entertaining version of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

The 23-year-old, who won the Gilmore Young Artist Award two years ago, is clearly destined to go far.

After the concert dinner, prepared by Duo Catering, was served on the theater terrace with co-chairs Judith Getto and Regina Roney overseeing the repast with a mob of musical mavens including Leslie Ridley-Tree, Jamie and Marcia Constance, Carter and Victoria Hines, Morrie and Irma Jurkowitz, Seymour and Shirley Lehrer, Marilyn Horne, Robert Weinman, Anne Towbes, Terry and Pam Valeski, Peter and Linda Beuret, Mary Collier, Robert and Val Montgomery, Jonathan Fox, Michael Baker, Luke Swetland, Ron Gallo, Carole Ridding, John Pillsbury, Maurice Singer, Janet Garufis, Sharon Bradford, Scott Reed, Jon Bishop, and Patrick Posey.