UCSB Summer Music Festival

On Saturday and Sunday, August 10 and 11, the UCSB campus will be alive with a wide range of music. The fourth annual UCSB Summer Music Festival runs from noon on Saturday until well after dark on Sunday and features performances by graduate students and alumni of the school’s music department, along with several other ensembles, including the Isaura String Quartet, which will perform the event’s final show at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday in Lotte Lehmann Hall. 

Founded in 2016 by UCSB graduate composer Federico Llach, the festival is programmed and managed entirely by students. The concerts, exhibits, and panel discussions are free, and the venues include the MultiCultural Center Theater; Storke Tower; the Digital Arts and Humanities Commons; the Art, Design & Architecture Museum; and the Music Department’s Karl Geiringer Hall and Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall. Saturday’s programs begin at 1 p.m. with The World on a String, a concert created to demonstrate the variety of plucked string instruments that exist around the world. There will be world premieres of works by UCSB composers, and a concert/panel discussion on Sunday on the theme of exploring women’s creativity and expanding options for women artists in music. 

Violist Jonathan Morgan, a UCSB PhD and music faculty member at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, will perform solo on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. and again with the Isaura String Quartet on Sunday evening. Morgan’s fellow musicians in Isaura include several graduates of the Cal Arts music program, and their specialty is performing contemporary music. Fans of choral music should make sure to catch the Adelfos Ensemble on Sunday at 3:30 p.m., and people with children should consider bringing them to the Kalinka show at 11 a.m. on Sunday in the outdoor Music Bowl. There’s even a dance concert on Saturday at 5:30 p.m., so there is sure to be something for every performing arts lover at UCSB this weekend. 

See music.ucsb.edu/summerfestival.