Tag archives: Classical Music

Montecito Ballerina Gets Second ‘Crack’ at Coveted Role
By Steven Libowitz   |   December 13, 2018

Last year, Isabel “Izzy” Fuentes achieved what is just about every teenage ballerina’s dream – getting cast as Clara, the girl who gets to go on a fairy tale journey with the come-to-life title character of The Nutcracker, Tchaikovsky’s famed Christmastime ballet, danced every December by Santa Barbara’s State Street Ballet. Then came the Thomas […]

Yuletide Spectacular
By Richard Mineards   |   December 6, 2018

With dozens of participants, Westmont College’s 14th annual Christmas Festival at the First Presbyterian Church was undoubtedly the hottest ticket in town, with four performances staged to cater for the demand. With the full arsenal of the Montecito college’s music talent on display, including the orchestra, women’s and men’s chorale, and the chamber singers, the […]

Fiery Fiddling from France
By Steven Libowitz   |   December 6, 2018

Not surprisingly, the Moldovan-born virtuoso violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja turned out to be one of the most ambitious and active music directors of the Ojai Music Festival when she headed up the venerable classical music festival this past summer. Her four-day visit to the mountain village veered from a solo performance unplugged in Libbey Park to […]

Banned Camp: Kronos Quartet Sounds Off
By Steven Libowitz   |   November 29, 2018

The Kronos Quartet has never shied away from controversy. Over the course of its 45-year history, the ensemble has exploded any previous notion of the limitations of the string quartet, embracing everything from ultra-modern composers and unfamiliar sounds to wildly unexpected and some would say edgy collaborations, most recently with “Sight Machine,” a multimedia piece […]

Slow Sonorous Sojourn into the Songbook
By Steven Libowitz   |   November 22, 2018

Eight decades or so into the Great American Songbook, it would seem to be near impossible for artists to find a new way of taking on the classic show tunes and pop hits of a couple of generations of songwriters. There have been straight-ahead vocal stylists bebop jazz interpretations, soul-shaking R&B rounds, and even a […]

Opera-tunity
By Richard Mineards   |   November 15, 2018

Opera Santa Barbara, celebrating its 25th anniversary, launched its latest season in cracking style with Puccini’s classic work La Boheme at the Granada. Director Omer Ben Seadia, who made her local debut three years ago with A Streetcar Named Desire and L’Italiana in Algeri, has done an artfully crafted four-act show with opera director Kostis […]

Stravinsky, in Sound and on Stage
By Steven Libowitz   |   November 15, 2018

Fresh off a season opening concert of audience-pleasing music by Gershwin and others, the Santa Barbara Symphony next takes on two famously adventurous works by Igor Stravinsky, including his ballet score The Rite of Spring, which had a “scandalous” premiere 105 years ago in Paris, when the bizarre story of pagan sacrifice and the composer’s […]

All’s Fair
By Steven Libowitz   |   November 8, 2018

An even newer work also gets its Santa Barbara debut over the same two weekends as UCSB Theater presents Vanity Fair, based on William Makepeace Thackery’s classic 1848 novel, and adapted for the stage with a modern twist by playwright Kate Hamill. Thomas Whitaker directs the tale of misadventures, friendship, and morally questionable acts, which […]

Autumn of 42: Cirque’s Ring Pay Tribute
By Steven Libowitz   |   October 11, 2018

Man and his machines form the basic elements of Cirque Mechanics, the modern company founded 14 years ago by former BMX bike champion Chris Lashua, who began by creating an innovative aerial apparatus. In his and his team’s vision, circus certainly has acrobatics and clowning around, but also is rooted in realism achieved by the […]

Strings and Things
By Richard Mineards   |   September 20, 2018

Santa Barbara Symphony’s 65th anniversary season, which kicks off at the Granada on October 20, promises to be a real humdinger. It includes a Stravinsky double bill, including The Rite of Spring, directed by the Ensemble Theatre Company’s Jonathan Fox with the State Street Ballet, and, for the first time on November 24, a Thanksgiving […]

Camerata Pacifica’s Beethoven Project
By Steven Libowitz   |   September 13, 2018

Camerata Pacifica began life almost 30 years ago as the Bach Camerata, a tribute to the famed Baroque composer whose music they frequently performed, including multiple concerts of the Brandenburg Concertos. But even before the Santa Barbara-based chamber music organization changed to its current moniker right around the time it marked its first decade, the […]

Cellist Finds Modeling Pulls at Heartstrings
By Steven Libowitz   |   August 23, 2018

Until less than a year ago, Karen Yeh was simply a musician. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But the cellist wanted something more. A native of Long Island, Yeh began studying piano at 6 and took up the cello three years later. She attended the State University of New York (SUNY) Stony Brook’s […]

High Note
By Richard Mineards   |   August 16, 2018

It couldn’t have been a more splendiferous end to the Music Academy of the West’s 71st annual summer fest when the Academy Festival Orchestra, under Los Angeles Philharmonic conductor Gustavo Dudamel, in his academy debut, performed with the L.A. Master Chorale, under artistic director Grant Gershon, at a sold-out Santa Barbara Bowl. Soprano Susanna Phillips […]

With Fossek, Friends Become Colleagues
By Steven Libowitz   |   August 9, 2018

Normally, classical musicians who end up collaborating might meet in a conservatory or perhaps sharing a seminar or the stage at a summer program. Maybe they’re introduced by colleagues or are drawn in by listening to each other’s recording. Not so much with SB native flamenco-influenced guitarist Chris Fossek and Paul Merkelo, the principal trumpet […]

Dixie Diva Digs Deep
By Steven Libowitz   |   August 9, 2018

For soprano Susanna Phillips, returning to the Music Academy of the West (MAW) this Saturday to take part in the big community concert at the Santa Barbara Bowl, when Gustavo Dudamel leads the massive Fellows-powered Academy Festival Orchestra and special guests mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung and the L.A. Master Chorale in Mahler’s Resurrection symphony (No. 2), […]

Count on Him: Dickerson Takes the Lead
By Steven Libowitz   |   August 2, 2018

Like most of the vocal Fellows at the Music Academy of the West (MAW), Benjamin Dickerson has an affinity both for art song and opera. But Dickerson has already reached the top tier in both endeavors at the Montecito summer festival. Dickerson claimed the coveted Marilyn Horne Song Competition in his only other summer in […]

Marriage a Golden Opera-tunity
By Steven Libowitz   |   August 2, 2018

The endless inventive stage director James Darrah teams with conductor James Conlon for an all-new production of Mozart’s comic opera The Marriage of Figaro, the 220-year old opus on passion and commitment set against class struggles and obstacles. Darrah turned the Music Academy of the West community on its ear in early July with OperaFest, […]

Gala-Force Winds Spring into August
By Steven Libowitz   |   July 26, 2018

The Music Academy of the West’s (MAW) annual gala benefit concert is anchored by a quintet of distinguished alumni artists. Among the former Fellows performing at this year’s special fundraiser are soprano Brenda Rae (2008), whom Opera News has praised for her “dazzling, pinpoint coloratura,” and bass-baritone Brandon Cedel (2010-11), whom The New Yorker‘s Alex […]

Elizabeth-an Times: Metaphors and Musing Inform Ogonek’s Ethos
By Steven Libowitz   |   July 12, 2018

Although the American composer Elizabeth Ogonek won’t turn 30 until next May, she’s already earned a great deal of attention and acclaim for her ever-expanding body of work that has included commissions from the London and Chicago Symphony orchestras as well as smaller ensembles and chamber pieces. Her music is markedly colorful and dramatic, with […]

Cover to Cover
By Richard Mineards   |   July 12, 2018

A mother-daughter collaboration that started 10 years ago has just come to fruition. Montecito resident Helen Drachkovitch and her cultural anthropologist daughter, Nicole Sault, who lives in Palo Alto, have just published Celebramos/Let’s Celebrate: Seis Traditions de Mexico/ Six Traditions From Mexico, a bilingual work. “It all started a decade ago when my mother became […]