Music Academy Comes to Life in Santa Barbara, Orchestrally and Otherwise

As usual, the internationally renowned Music Academy summer season opened with a sumptuous teaser of a night, two Saturdays back. Swank, style, and cultural substance merged in the gala drinks/dinner/concert soiree, this year dubbed “The Magic of Miraflores.” Among the items on the gala evening’s agenda was a performance by illustrious alum Michelle Bradley — she of the Met’s Aida fame this past season — along with Chopin-specializing pianist Vassily Primakov, and, for next generation’s sake, the ambitious Academy-hosted youth chorus project Sing!

Now it’s down to business, as the annual flow of public concerts, master classes, and concentrated, arduous music-making takes charge of this elite property. Montecito’s Miraflores estate has housed the Academy since 1951, after the institution had decamped at Cate School since its founding in 1940. For last year’s 75th anniversary, a branding reboot changed the name from Music Academy of the West to just Music Academy, with a streamlined new logo to boot.

This week, in fact, the customary opening concert by the Takács Quartet took place on Wednesday, and alum mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard returns for a partially Spanish-themed recital on Friday, June 16, following a recital here in 2019.

Asked about her influential summer at the Academy, back in 2012, Leonard commented, “I remember having a wonderful summer. It was just a wonderful environment to be in. It was also a different time of life. I was younger — 22 or 23. I was single, and I didn’t have a child. All I had to do was take care of myself. Of course, it’s very different than it’s been for the last 12 years. So the idea of that is a luxury at this point.

“But at the time, that’s what you need when you’re trying to hone your skills. You have to focus on what you’re doing, kind of like 24/7. Then as you get older, you have other responsibilities. It gets that much more complicated and you hopefully become that much more efficient at doing all of the things, because you simply don’t have the time, the luxury of time,” she laughed.

In another significant launch point in the Music Academy calendar, a week later, on Saturday, June 24, the Academy heads to downtown Santa Barbara for its lauded series of orchestral Saturdays at The Granada Theatre. Leading the Academy Festival Orchestra on that night is conductor Stéphane Denève, currently head of the St. Louis Symphony and the New World Symphony, among other high-stakes classical music connections. With this all-Berlioz program, Denève kicks off an orchestra series that will also bring to town — and to mentor and guide the young fellows — noted conductors Osmo Vänskä (July 1), Anthony Parnther (July 8), JoAnn Falletta (July 29), and Hannu Lintu (Aug. 5).

Among other notable concert action in June are two appearances by thinking person’s pianist Jeremy Denk, in an all-Bach recital on June 27 and performing Brahms on the first chamber music Tuesday (the x2 Series) on June 29.

During the gala, amid a well-deserved tribute to President/CEO Scott Reed — in his last year at the helm — Reed himself, who began as an intern 25 years ago and has been director for 12 years, followed up a series of tributes with a telling commentary: “The Music Academy, I say often, is a place that rewards hard work. I am a believer in that and, in many ways, a product of that. This is a place where a young singer can realize her dream of singing at the Metropolitan Opera. Bravo, Michelle Bradley. This is a place where a young violinist can forge his way to become concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic — shout out to our violinist Frank Huang.

“And this is a place where a young intern can one day become the president.”

See musicacademy.org.