Tag archives: Music Academy of the West

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 […]

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 […]

The Hotel Californian was the site for the inaugural annual Santa Barbara hotel Olympics featuring a host of events including a bell cart race, culinary palate test, bike building, towel origami, and even cake wars. “After the terrible time we had at the start of the year with the devastating mudslides, we thought we needed […]

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 […]

Santa Barbara Polo Club patron Tom Barrack hosted the 7th annual Santa Ynez Valley polo classic at his sprawling Piocho Ranch, raising around $60,000 for the 26-year-old local charity People Helping People, which has a two million dollar annual budget and serves nearly 4,000 clients. The bountiful bash, which attracted 1,000 guests to the ranch, […]

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? […]

In lieu of the Dream Foundation’s annual Flower Empower lunch, the popular nonprofit hosted a bouquet-making event on the front lawn of the Hospice of Santa Barbara. Last year more than 8,300 bouquets were delivered, using donated flowers, to hospices, cancer centers, and personal residences. The event, which raised $25,000, also honored program sponsors Tim […]

Normally, there’s nothing major on the classical calendar between the closing of the Ojai Festival and the opening bell of the Music Academy of the West’s summer festival, which this year is on Monday, June 18. But due to the closure of the 101 Freeway in the wake of the Montecito debris flow, the Santa […]

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, […]

Soprano Audra McDonald, who has a record-breaking six Tony Awards, two Grammys, and an Emmy, was in top form when she appeared in the last Granada performance of the UCSB Arts & Lectures current season. New York-based McDonald, who received a National Medal of Arts in 2015, the highest honor for achievement in the arts, […]

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 […]