It Takes Two

It was all two grand for words when Montecito philanthropic dynamic duo Roger and Sarah Chrisman opened the door of their charming Ennisbrook home for a Santa Barbara Symphony prelude party with husband and wife Israeli pianists Sivan Silver and Gil Garburg performing a four-hand keyboard work on the back to back Baldwin and Steinway grand pianos.

The impressive keyboards, which Sarah, a board member, explained she had studied music on as a youngster, with the Steinway belonging to her music teacher, was a fitting appetizer for the orchestra’s concert under maestro Nir Kabaretti at the Granada playing a new arrangement on a single grand of Brahms’ G minor piano quartet by Austrian composer Richard Dunser, with Beethoven’s intensely emotional Eroica symphony in E-flat major, honoring the German composer’s 250th birthday, as the main course, and Michael Torke‘s 1988 work Ash as a starter.

Among the music lovers at the boffo bash were Caren Rager, Kevin Marvin, Brooks and Kate Firestone, Robert Weinman, Dan and Meg Burnham, Joan Rutkowski, Don Gilman, Arthur Swalley, Janet Garufis, Anais Pellegrini, Howard Jay Smith and Patricia Dixon.

Wonderful Woodwind

New guest flutist Korean Jasmine Choi performed with the Camerata Pacifica at the Music Academy of the West’s Hahn Hall in its first concert of the New Year.

Choi, who has performed internationally, including the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the Cincinnati Symphony, was the perfect accompaniment as part of a talented troupe, featuring oboist Nicholas Daniel, clarinetist Jose Franch-Ballester, bassoonist William Short and horn player Martin Owen, playing Nielsen’s wind quintet.

The entertaining concert kicked off with Beethoven’s lively Octet for Winds in E-flat Major, with another piece of the composer’s work, Quintet for Oboe, Three Horns and Bassoon, Hess 19, before concluding with Dvorak’s Serenade for Winds in D Minor with cellist Ani Aznavoorian and Timothy Eckert on double bass.