Tag archives: MAW
The Music Academy launches its new season of projecting Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD series at the recently technically upgraded Hahn Hall with Luigi Cherubini’s rarely performed Medea, with Met soprano star Sondra Radvanovsky as the mythic sorceress who will stop at nothing in her quest for vengeance. The Met-premiere production recorded live transmission at […]
Music Academy (they lopped off “of the West” from the name this summer) doesn’t just have a new moniker, they’ve also created a brand-new series to continue the celebration of its milestone 75th year. Think of the new Mariposa Series as “homecoming” recitals held on campus to showcase what Academy alumni and faculty are up […]
Social gridlock reigned at the Music Academy when Santa Barbara Beautiful staged its 58th annual award celebration with 200 guests at the Kuehn Court reception with wandering musical troubadours Ted Hoagland, Chris Judge, and Collin Richardson. The awards celebration was staged in the Lehman Ballroom, emceed by ubiquitous KEYT-TV reporter John Palminteri, with a welcome […]
The 2022 Music Academy Summer Festival came to a close on Saturday night with the symphony-vocal extravaganza at the Granada. Coming up next: three different recitals from the five fellows who claimed top prize in the musical competitions, plus perhaps a new product from the winner of the Music Academy Innovation Institute’s 2022 Fast Pitch […]
The Music Academy wrapped up its 75th anniversary summer festival in fine form at the Granada when alumna Italian Speranza Scappucci conducted the Academy Festival Orchestra. With the hugely entertaining program including Rossini’s “William Tell Overture,” “The Pines of Rome” by Respighi, and vocal works by Donizetti, Verdi, Gounod, Bizet, Serrano, Chapi, and Puccini, the […]
As its 75th anniversary season winds down, the Music Academy’s Academy Festival Orchestra under conductor Stéphane Denève was in fine form at the Granada. The entertaining concert featured Ravel’s masterpiece “Daphnis et Chloe Suite No. 2” and Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 3.” Frenchman Denève, music director of the St. Louis Symphony and the Brussels Philharmonic, was […]
The Music Academy created its first-ever directing fellow position this summer, and chose Canadian Sawyer Ann Craig, who has a degree from McGill and credits as both a singer and director all over Canada. Craig had the chance to work alongside the directors of each of the vocal performance events, including Sara Widzer, Peter Kazaras, […]
Composer-violinist Jessie Montgomery is no stranger to Santa Barbara, having performed several times in the intimate Mary Craig Auditorium at the downtown Museum of Art with the Catalyst Quartet, the Grammy Award-winning string foursome from the Sphinx Organization she spearheaded from 2012-20. But that was before George Floyd, and the Black Lives Matter-spurred reckoning with […]
Don’t walk into the Music Academy’s Cabaret at Hahn Hall next Thursday, July 28, expecting to see a knockoff of the 1966 Kander and Ebb Broadway musical or Bob Fosse’s 50-year-old film adaptation. While both are set in Berlin’s cabaret culture during the Weimar Republic, the Academy event is an originally devised cabaret with a […]
With all due respect to Opera Santa Barbara, the opera event of the year may well take place this weekend when the Music Academy (MA) mounts an original and fully-staged production of Tchaikovsky’s popular and beloved opera Eugene Onegin at the Granada on Friday night and Sunday afternoon. Especially if Peter Kazaras’ direction comes close […]
Sō Percussion’s mission, which is both straightforward and very ambitious, is to serve as a “percussion-based music organization that creates and presents new collaborative works to adventurous and curious audiences and educational initiatives to engaged students… in order to exemplify the power of music to unite people and forge deep social bonds. Pretty much all […]
How fitting that Hannu Lintu, a graduate of the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, should be conducting the Finnish composer’s The Oceanides with the Academy Festival Orchestra at the Granada, part of the Music Academy’s 75th anniversary summer festival celebrations. Lintu, 54, chief conductor of the Finnish National Opera and Ballet, was in extraordinary form for […]
The Music Academy (MA) represents a bit of a beachhead for Hannu Lintu, the Finnish conductor who has extensive experience leading orchestras and opera performances in his homeland and across Europe and the Eastern U.S. but has rarely ventured to the Western states. Helming the Academy Festival Orchestra for this weekend’s concert at the Granada […]
Westmont senior Sibongakonkhe (“Sibo”) Msibi joins an elite group of 20 Fellows this summer at the Vocal Institute at the Music Academy in Santa Barbara. The first Westmont student to achieve this honor, he aspires to become “one of the best opera singers out there.” Chosen from an international pool of talented applicants who seek […]
It was an evening of high note, with many in between, when Montecito’s venerable, newly renamed Music Academy celebrated its 75th anniversary with a signature gala on its 10-acre Miraflores oceanside campus for 320 guests raising around $600,000. The boffo bash, co-chaired by the tony triumvirate of Valerie Montgomery, Kandy Luria-Budgor, and Michele Brustin, was […]
For Tom Cipullo, MAW’s 2022 composer-in-residence, collaborating with two other faculty members in putting together an evening of his vocal works sung by the Academy’s fellows has been both a challenge and a joy. “There are 14 singers in all vocal ranges, and we have to give everybody an experience that fits them and also […]
Conductor Donato Cabrera and Music Academy of the West (MAW) vocal pianist John Churchwell met in 2003, the first of two summers Donato spent at MAW as assistant conductor for the annual opera. The two, who live near each other in the Bay Area, became fast friends and visit each other frequently. In fact, Cabrera […]
The Music Academy of the West’s return to its normal extremely event-packed eight-week summer music festival in 2022 happily coincides with a major milestone for the institute headquartered right here in Montecito. If previous partnerships with the New York Philharmonic and the London Symphony Orchestra haven’t already done so, MAW’s 75th anniversary season truly places […]
As Montecito’s Music Academy of the West celebrates its 75th anniversary, it’s a whole new image for the storied 10-acre Miraflores oceanside campus, I can exclusively reveal. For the past eight months, a team of academy board members, administration, and professional consultants – 21C Media Group from New York and My Brilliant Friend from Los […]
Grand opera is returning to the Granada Theatre. After Opera Santa Barbara’s (OSB) two-plus years filled with ways to creatively cope with the COVID pandemic that ranged from virtual performances, to two Concerts in Your Car outdoor staged adaptations (that included, appropriately, a version of Carmen) and a season of smaller, shorter one-acts, reworkings, and […]
