Classical Corner

Still pivoting due to the pandemic, the Santa Barbara Symphony is squeezing in the pair of postponed performances featuring violin superstar Anne Akiko Meyers as guest soloist beginning just a week after the ensemble offered the world premiere of Concerto for Piano Four Hands and String Orchestra by composer Richard Dünser via Brahms and Schumann. Meyers – the sister of Sansum ophthalmologist Dr. Toni Meyers, who was honored by the symphony last year with a special COVID tribute concert to local healthcare workers that featured the eye doctor performing on the Granada stage – will perform a program of Mexican and Spanish-inspired music anchored by Fandango, a violin concerto written for her by Mexican composer Arturo Márquez. The symphony will also play selections from Bizet’s Carmen Suite, Márquez’s popular “Danzón No. 2,” and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol. Performances of the “Fandango Picante” program originally slated for January are 4 pm on Sunday, May 1, and an evening concert the following Thursday, May 5.

Met Opera’s first-ever production of the original five-act French version of Verdi’s Don Carlos boasting a monumental new staging by David McVicar gets a Live in HD encore screening at 2 pm on Sunday, May 1, at Hahn Hall. Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts an all-star cast featuring tenor Matthew Polenzani in the title role, with Sonya Yoncheva, Jamie Barton, Etienne Dupuis, Eric Owens,and John Relyea. Visit musicacademy.org. 

Focus on film

The Carsey-Wolf Center’s Pollock Theater hosts three special screenings followed by Q&A sessions this week, starting with Timbuktu, which was Nominated for the Palme d’Or at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, and features a series of scenes where residents’ lives are upturned by the militant occupiers. Co-writer-director Abderrahmane Sissako joins Richard Watts of University of Washington for a discussion after the Thursday, April 28 screening. Watts and Sissako, who is also writer-director of Life on Earth (1999), Waiting for Happiness (2002), and Bamako (2006) will also participate in a roundtable discussion the following morning at 10:30 am. 

On Saturday afternoon, Pollock’s Script to Screen series projects the original Jurassic Park movie followed by a talk with screenwriter David Koepp, also the scribe of the sequel The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Panic Room (2002), Spider-Man (2002), War of the Worlds (2005), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), and Inferno (2016), among others. Tuesday evening brings a showing of an episode from HBO’s Scenes from a Marriage, the English-language remake of Ingmar Bergman’s highly influential 1973 Swedish miniseries that traces a couple’s crumbling marriage over the course of a decade. The post-screening chat boasts Rick Rosen, who is a Carsey-Wolf Center advisory board member as well as the co-founder of WME Agency and the agent/representative for Hagai Levi, the writer-director of the 2021 series that stars Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain. Visit carseywolf.ucsb.edu for details and reservations for the free, in-person events.