Quartet Kills

Grammy Award nominees the Danish String Quartet, visiting our Eden by the Beach for the fourth time, gave two very different performances for their UCSB Arts & Lectures appearances.

The fab four – violinists Frederik Oland and Rune Tonsgaard Sorensen, cellist Fredrik Schoyen Sjolin and violist Asbjorn Norgaard – kicked off their latest visit at the intimate Rockwood Woman’s Club with Last Leaf: A Nordic Folk Program, an informal salon-style event.

Just 24 hours later they were at the university’s 900-seat Campbell Hall playing string quartets from Haydn, Abrahamsen, and Nielsen.

They can’t come back soon enough…

Light Chasers

It was back to the future when the Santa Barbara Symphony under veteran maestro Nir Kabaretti returned to a work it co-commissioned more than a decade earlier, acclaimed Chicago composer Joseph Schwantner‘s “Chasing Light” at the Granada.

The enchanting evening continued with Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, featuring three stellar local musicians – cellist Ani Aznavoorian and violinist Paul Huang, both members of the Camerata Pacifica, and regular guest Swiss-born pianist Gilles Vonsattel.

The sold-out concert closed with Robert Schumann’s popular Symphony No.3 in E-flat Major, inspired by the history and spirit of Europe’s mighty River Rhine.

Everybody was going with the flow…

Ritzy Residence

It will come as absolutely no surprise that Montecito is one of the richest enclaves in America.

In the latest Richest Places list, issued by Bloomberg, our tony town has jumped four places in the rankings from 32 to 28, with an average household income of $276,564.

Atherton near San Francisco with an average of $450,696 and Scarsdale, New York, with $417,335 top the list, along with Hillsborough, Bronxville, New York, Darien, Old Greenwich and Westport, Connecticut, with Palm Beach, Florida, trailing at number 35 with an average income of $268,695 and Malibu, just south of us, at 43 with an income level of $261,237.

The Criers 

Music spanning the centuries was artfully played when the 16 Boston musicians A Far Cry made their debut at the Music Academy of the West’s Hahn Hall, part of UCSB’s Arts & Lectures series.

The 12-year-old energized Grammy-nominated string orchestra played a riveting repertoire, kicking off with the Baroque 18th century classic Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 before launching into Kennedy Center Honors recipient Philip Glass‘s delightful 20th century Symphony No. 3.

The extremely entertaining show wrapped with Hungarian composer Bela Bartok’s Divertimento for String Orchestra and Argentinian Osvaldo Golijov’s Tenebrae.

An utterly superb evening…