Tag archives: MAW
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, […]
When the mud and debris from the mountains coursed through Montecito back on January 9, Robert Cassidy immediately felt the need to support the victims and the community in some way. “Like so many people, I wanted to help, but I didn’t really know what I could do,” said Cassidy, a classical pianist who only […]
Storyteller Children’s Center, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary, hosted its fourth annual Lunchbox Luncheon at the Rockwood Women’s Club, raising more than $80,000 for the nonprofit that helps the city’s homeless and at-risk youngsters and preschoolers achieve kindergarten readiness. More than 47 percent of the children, aged 18 months to 5 years old, live […]
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 certainly an eclectic program when soprano Julia Bullock, accompanied by John Arida on the piano, wowed the audience at the Music Academy of the West’s Hahn Hall. Bullock, who has appeared with many the world’s great orchestras, including the New York and Los Angeles philharmonics, and the London and San Francisco symphonies, sang […]
Our tony town’s Rescue Mission hosted its annual Easter Feast for our community’s more impoverished residents, and for the 11th year my trusty shutterbug, Priscilla, and I volunteered our services as waiters. Kitchen director Wesley Jones served 320 pounds of ham, 200 pounds of potatoes, 360 pounds of carrots, and 75 pounds of peas to […]
Critics have been tripping over themselves to find fresh metaphors and more to describe soprano Julia Bullock‘s considerable gifts and her depth of emotional delivery. Discerning local song lovers have already had the pleasure of experiencing her extended talents in person twice in the last couple of years, as she sang “Somewhere” with the New […]
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 […]
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 […]
Zhu Wang, a Chinese pianist currently studying at Juilliard, won The Music Academy of the West/Steinway & Sons inaugural Solo Piano Competition at last summer’s festival, taking home the $5,000 prize, and earning a recital tour that includes performances in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago. The tour also features a return to Hahn Hall, […]
Montecito nun Pauline Krismanich, 88, who has lived at La Casa de Maria for 48 years, is retiring and moving to the Immaculate Heart Community center in Los Angeles. After being displaced by both the Thomas Fire and the mudslides, Pauline saw them as her sign to finally retire. She has been a figure around […]
Music Academy of the West staged two concerts for Recovery and Hope at Hahn Hall in the wake of the recent mudslides and flash floods. The hastily organized free events featured soprano Julie Adams, alumnus cellist Joshua Roman, pianists Natsha Kislenko and Margaret McDonald, clarinetist Richie Hawley, alum and faculty member Nico Abondolo, trumpeter Paul […]
The Music Academy of the West has established an annual Alumni Enterprise Awards scheme to help budding musical entrepreneurs who’ve attended the Miraflores campus. The awards, ranging from $2,500 to $20,000, will fund original ideas in areas including artistic expression, audience development, and technology, based on scope and scale. Academy president Scott Reed says: “We […]
Montecito philanthropist Michael Hammer‘s wife, Misty, was feted at a bridal shower hosted by Dolores Johnson at the home of Condor Express owner, Hiroko Benko. After lunch overlooking the ocean and the Channel Islands, a tea ceremony presented by Tom Craveiro and Yuki Nakamura, wife of Nobel Prize winner Shuji Nakamura. Guests included police chief […]
