Tag archives: Music Academy
It was all two grand for words when the Music Academy launched the first of its Mariposa Series concerts at Hahn Hall with the extraordinary keyboard duo of Anderson and Roe with academy alum Elizabeth Joy Roe and Greg Anderson playing back-to-back Steinway pianos. Since forming their dynamic musical partnership in 2002 as students at […]
Old and New Worlds were in the spotlight when Camerata Pacifica continued its 34th season with From Bach to Bolivia, the first of the programs in its Baroque series at the Music Academy’s Hahn Hall. Featuring period instruments and curated by acclaimed flutist Emi Ferguson, the repertoire included five seminal Bach chamber works. They were […]
You can’t fault Elizabeth Roe for expressing unbridled enthusiasm for returning to the Music Academy for her first purely public performance in town since spending the summer of 2001 as a fellow at the institute. Jerry Lowenthal was her mentor and Michael Towbes her compeer during the idyllic eight weeks, and now she’s heading back […]
Former award-winning opera performer Joan Rutkowski certainly had a lot to sing about when she won the Jacaranda Award for Community Service at the 59th annual Santa Barbara Beautiful bash, chaired by Marcella Simmons, at the Music Academy. Fittingly enough, Joan, who moved to our rarefied enclave in 1968 with her late cellist husband, Geoffrey, […]
The Music Academy (MA) didn’t waste any time finding a successor to Scott Reed, who announced last spring that the 2023 Summer Festival would be his last as president and CEO after 12 years at the helm. Less than a week after the final symphony concert at the Granada earlier this month, the Music Academy […]
Scott Reed’s brief speech at his last official public appearance as the Music Academy’s president/CEO after 12 years at the helm, which drew an instant standing ovation, set the stage for the emotional rollercoaster ride provided by the Academy Festival Orchestra at the Granada last Saturday night in the final event of the 2023 Summer […]
Montecito’s Music Academy wrapped up its 76th Summer Festival in splendid style when Hannu Lintu conducted the Academy Festival Orchestra at the Granada. The entertaining show featured Richard Strauss’ 1898 “Ein Heldenleben” and Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet” with Lintu, 55, conductor of the Finnish National Opera and Ballet, at the top of his game. The […]
It has long been part of the Renaissance salons and Waldorf art schools to pair art and music as a cultural learning experience. On Sunday, July 23, the galleries at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) were abuzz with guests set to do just that, to meet multidisciplinary artist Awol Erizku (Ethopian, b. 1988), […]
Don’t confuse Samuel Watson with the speed climbing champion of the same name, a teenager who holds the U.S. records and international gold medals in the new Olympic sport, although Sam Watson the Music Academy fellow has also made a meteoric rise. The 20-year-old contrabassoonist can’t scale an indoor wall in five seconds, but his […]
The final weeks of the Music Academy’s 76th annual Summer Festival have been the icing on the classical cake! Principal players with the London Symphony Orchestra showed their prowess at Lehmann Hall when they performed chamber works by Britten, Villa-Lobos, Perivolaris, Salzedo, Hahn, and Haydn with flutist Gareth Davies, cellist David Cohen, violinist Clare Duckworth, […]
Music Academy solo piano fellow Priscila Navarro is the $5,000 grand prize winner of the Innovation Institution’s 2023 Fast Pitch competition. Her new venture, Peru Piano, an anthology for inclusive education, was one of eight stellar pitches evaluated by a distinguished jury – Angelica Cortez, Executive Director Suzuki Association of the Americas; Music Academy alumnae […]
Take a look at the photo in the online calendar promoting the Duo Competition taking place on July 31. The violinist is brightly lit, his facial features and instrument fully visible, while the pianist is in the background, comparatively dark and blurry with even her hair blending into the background, and no piano keys visible. […]
It wasn’t quite Tin Pan Alley, but the Music Academy’s latest chamber night at Lehmann Hall as the 76th annual Summer Festival winds down was pretty novel when a talented quartet played Bay Area composer Gabriella Smith’s work “Anthozoa.” Inspired by a diving trip to French Polynesia, Smith, 31, used two baking tins and even […]
The Music Academy’s 76th annual summer festival reached its halfway mark with a second chamber night concert at Lehmann Hall featuring works by Joan Tower’s “Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman No. 3,” Mozart’s “Piano Quartet in E-flat Major” with Qiyan Xing on violin, Molly Prow on viola, Simon Housner on cello, and Robert Brooks Carlson […]
Coleman, Prokofiev, and Mendelssohn Tear the Roof Off “The Music Academy.” This definite article and two modest nouns scarcely hint at what’s crouching in the woods near Butterfly Beach. My ex-girlfriend (or “wife” in the common parlance) and I attended the third Chamber Night event at the Music Academy’s Lehmann Hall on an otherwise mellow […]
The members of the Music Academy’s SING! children’s choir were part of the two triumphant performances of La bohème at the Granada Theatre last weekend. This Sunday afternoon, they’ll be back downtown as the stars of the show at the Lobero Theatre, once again joining forces with the Young People’s Chorus (YPC) of New York […]
Italian composer Puccini’s beloved opera La bohème took on a whole new tone at the Granada as part of the Music Academy’s 76th annual Summer Festival. Instead of Paris’ Latin Quarter in the 1830s, as in the original 1895 work, the setting was Brooklyn and Manhattan in 2011, a time of restless energy and a […]
Violinist extraordinaire Augustin Hadelich was back in our Eden by the Beach for the second time in two months when he performed at the Lobero as part of the Music Academy’s summer fest. Grammy Award winner Hadelich, who I saw at a CAMA Masterseries concert in April, his fifth appearance for the organization since 2015, […]
Mo Zhou wasn’t sure what the Academy’s new vocal program directors Sasha Cooke and John Churchwell had in mind when they asked her to helm this summer’s production of La bohème. A traditional take with period costumes and mid-19th century mannerisms? Something more modern? Instead, they asked Zhou, who had assistant directed three previous productions […]
To the Music Academy for an entertaining lunch with New Yorker music critic Alex Ross, who is doing a short residency at the Miraflores campus, teaching 10 students, whittled down from 25 applicants, how to write succinct and entertaining program notes on the summer festival concerts. Los Angeles-based Cross, 55, a graduate of Harvard, has […]
