Tag archives: Classical Music
Violinist-composer-vocalist Caroline Shaw – who became the youngest Pulitzer Prize winner for composition at the age of 30 years ago for her vocal piece “Partita” – has guested at Music Academy of the West (MAW) every summer since 2016, first as a visiting artist, then a composer in residence, and now Mosher Guest Arts, which […]
Come Saturday and Monday, opera will be busting out all over the place at Miraflores. Rather than staging OperaFest – nee Opera Scenes – in its entirety in the cozy confines of Hahn Hall, where the Music Academy of the West (MAW) vocal Fellows are normally accompanied only by a single pianist, vignettes will be […]
How do you top a 70th anniversary season that featured the culmination of a four-year partnership with the venerable New York Philharmonic featuring music director Alan Gilbert leading the orchestra for the final time in a monumental concert at La Playa Stadium, in what was Santa Barbara biggest single classical musical event in its history? […]
PATH – People Assisting the Homeless – hit a definite home run with its second Making It Home tour, a sell-out event with 260 supporters taking a tour in eight trolleys – two more than last year – of four of our rarefied enclave’s toniest properties and raising around $75,000 for the nonprofit formed three […]
Dianne Gayoski Duva is the latest member of the Music Academy of the West’s board. Duva is a founding partner of the Santa Barbara wealth management firm Arlington Financial Advisors and co-hosts the weekly radio show Money Talk on AM1290. She currently serves as a member of the board for the SB Public Library Foundation, […]
CAMA – the Community Arts Music Association – is celebrating its century with 12 concerts featuring the world’s finest instrumentalists. Highlights will include appearances by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, violinist extraordinaire Itzhak Perlman, the Russian National Orchestra, and London’s Philharmonia Orchestra under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen in its International series at the Granada. The […]
Violinist Jennifer Koh has brought her three-part “Bach and Beyond” and the cutting edge “Bridge to Beethoven” recital series to Hahn Hall for several concerts with UCSB Arts & Lectures over the years. Now, the fearless fiddler is returning to town with her most ambitious endeavor to date: “Shared Madness”, a set of 30 short […]
The Westmont Orchestra performs its final concert of the academic year, celebrating the music of Ireland and Britain on Friday, April 27, at 7 pm at First Presbyterian Church. Tickets, which cost $10 for general admission (students are free), may be purchased at the door. For more information at the Spring Orchestra Concert, please contact […]
In an offering that wouldn’t appear out of place at a Fringe Festival, New York’s acclaimed theater company Bedlam makes its Santa Barbara debut on April 19-20 with a two-night stand featuring two different programs of classic works. The four actors take on 49 characters in adrenaline-fueled performances unexpectedly funny, stripped-down stagings of Shakespeare’s Hamlet […]
Hungarian pianist Sir Andras Schiff, making his seventh CAMA appearance since 1985, mesmerized with his Master Series performance at the Lobero. The concert, the penultimate show in the popular series, featured 65-year-old Schiff, who is appearing with the New York Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony this season, on his Bosendorfer grand playing works by Mendelssohn, Beethoven, […]
Rising young opera directing star Alison Moritz makes her Santa Barbara debut with Opera Santa Barbara’s (OSB) double bill of centennial celebrating Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti and Douglas Moore’s backstage farce Gallantry, slotting the two-day run of one-acts at Center Stage on Friday and Saturday, April 21-22, between productions of Madama Butterfly with Syracuse […]
Community Arts Music Association (CAMA) has been presenting the world’s finest classical artists since 1919. This concert at the Granada was the last of their 99th year. The next show will be the beginning of its 100th anniversary. What a testament to all the people who founded CAMA and to all those who have supported […]
When the 2017 Music Academy of the West (MAW) summer festival came to a close, the question arose: How do you follow a four-year partnership with the New York Philharmonic that culminated with music director Alan Gilbert‘s final appearance with arguably the country’s greatest symphony orchestra in a massive concert at SBCC’s stadium, the largest […]
It was an event of high note when the Santa Barbara Choral Society celebrated its 70th anniversary and the 25th anniversary of its director, JoAnne Wasserman, with two well-attended concerts at the First Presbyterian Church, which included alumnae from past decades. Highlight of the performances was German composer Franz Joseph Haydn’s 1798 work Missa in […]
Former Montecito beekeeper Rick Sawyer is waxing poetic. Rick, 66, who created the Hollister Ranch and Santa Barbara honey companies in the mid-1970s, has re-launched Within The Shells, a 210-page book he originally published in 1973 as a limited 100 copy leather-bound version. “It is the first of three poetry books I plan to complete,” […]
The Westmont College Choir and Orchestra will host its Masterworks Concert tour performing Handel’s Messiah (parts 2 and 3) beginning in Santa Barbara on Friday, April 6, at 7 pm at First United Methodist Church, 305 E. Anapamu St. Admission is $10, students are free. For more information, contact the music department at (805) 565-6040. […]
Hector Sanchez appeared in so many of the pieces performed at last year’s BASSH – the theatrical showcase for local dance professionals and their protégés to show off their choreography in a wide variety of social dance genres – that one was thinking they might have to change the name of the two-decades old production […]
Social gridlock reigned at the venerable Granada for a 20/10 celebration, marking the 20th anniversary of the first Santa Barbara Center for the Performing Arts board meeting and the 10th anniversary of the iconic theater’s grand re-opening with founding, former, and current board members. The McCune Founders Room was packed as Hal Conklin, Frank Goss, […]
Rather than decomposing, the four musicians featured in Camerata Pacifica’s latest concert at the Music Academy of the West’s Hahn Hall were very much alive and well. Normally, the classical music troupe’s monthly repertoire includes one or more famous past composers, but Irish founder Adrian Spence decided a more contemporary program was needed with a […]
Berlin-based organist Cameron Carpenter, who I first saw two years ago, was back in our Eden by the Beach for another UCSB Arts & Lectures Granada show. The maverick showman, the first organist nominated for a Grammy Award for a solo album, continues to smash the stereotypes of organists, organ, and classical music as a […]
