An Aperitif of Piano
Italian pianist Alessio Bax, a frequent visitor to our Eden by the Beach, who performed with the Santa Barbara Symphony at the Granada playing Schumann’s “Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54,” gave a private concert 48 hours earlier for VIP supporters in the second of its Concert Aperitif series at the historic APS aerie of Mary Collier, a revered French tutor at Westmont College, hosted by maestro Nir Kabaretti.
As guests including Anne Towbes, Dan and Meg Burnham, Janet Garufis, Kathryn Martin, Nancy Golden, and Mikki Andina noshed on delicious canapés from Lorraine Lin Catering and quaffed wines from Stolpman Vineyards, Bax, who has appeared with more than 150 orchestras, collaborating with such eminent conductors as Sir Simon Rattle, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and Sir Andrew Davis, played a number of works on a 1933 Chickering grand piano, including Bach’s “English Suite No. 2 in A minor,” Ravel’s “La Valse” and de Falla’s “The Miller’s Dance.”
The series, which launched in October, features seven hour-long concerts at private homes in the area to mark the symphony’s 70th anniversary, and hopes to raise in excess of $2 million.
The weekend’s concert paid symphonic and visual homage to the centuries-old Chumash heritage with a work by local composer Cody Westheimer titled Wisdom of the Water, Earth, Sky derived from tribal parables with each parable read in English and Chumash by descendants, including Marianne Parra and Ernestine Ygnacio-DeSoto.
The extremely entertaining program also featured Sibelius’ tone poem, “Valse Triste, Op. 44, No. 1,” and Mozart’s “Symphony No. 40 in G-minor.”