CAMA Pulls Out all the Stops

CAMA, now celebrating its 101st year, is having to face the music!

The popular organization is justifiably renowned for bringing the world’s top orchestras as part of its International Series to the venerable Granada, with the musicians often booked more than a year in advance to ensure their availability.

But sometimes even the best laid plans go awry, as happened with this season which just kicked off with London’s 74-year-old Royal Philharmonic under conductor Pinchas Zukerman, a two-time Grammy Award winning violinist, playing works by Tchaikovsky and Mozart in the penultimate concert of its two week American tour, its 12th time in our Eden by the Beach.

President Bob Montgomery revealed that two scheduled performers, the 117-year-old Minnesota Orchestra and the 69-year-old Moscow Philharmonic, had advised separately they were cancelling their respective U.S. tours because of funding problems.

“Both of them had been scheduled for the fall, and the cancellations came late enough that there seemed to be no other available prestigious orchestras with open fall dates on such short notice,” says Bob.

“As you might imagine, all these orchestra tours require substantial ‘home base’ financial support, and the Moscow and Minnesota orchestras somehow concluded the projected costs for their tours were too great. After quite a scramble to fill out our six-event Granada season, we necessarily ended up with unusual date compression, with our first concert not until last week, then two in March, two in April, and one in May.”

Under the circumstances, Stephen Cloud and his CAMA – Community Arts Music Association – committee did “yeoman-like work” to complete the schedule, with Canada’s 36-year-old Les Violons du Roy on April 28 and the 52-year-old Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra on May 18, completing the program.

“Our Granada schedule for next season is already very close to complete, so that barring other now unforeseen cancellations, we will once again have a much more even date distribution for our concerts,” adds Bob.

Music to everyone’s ears…