Off-Season Highs at the Music Academy

For two months each summer, the Music Academy has routinely shaken up Santa Barbara’s would-be dormant season with classical music offerings of a high and international order. It has become a regular feature of the serious music calendar in town, stretching back more than 75 years.

Now, there is a new programming kid in town between the summer sessions, with the second installment of the still-young Mariposa Series of autumnal concerts, stocked with artists of global renown and local tentacles. Often, these concerts have ancillary links extending to the Academy’s recent agenda or ever-expanding alumni population out in the established classical world.

In the case of this series opener, the widely acclaimed and accessible Anderson & Roe Piano Duo, at Hahn Hall on Thursday, October 26, half of the duo is Music Academy alum Elizabeth Roe, in tandem with pianist Greg Anderson. With Grammy nominations and lofty Billboard rankings for their (so far) five albums, the duo — formed in 2002 — is also a crossover dream team. The pair concocts intelligent two-piano arrangements of pop music (the Beatles are slated to make an appearance on their Hahn Hall program) alongside such mainstay classical figures as Bach, Mozart — à la Ragtime — and Gustav Holst, of The Planets fame.

Next up in the series, on Monday, November 6, is clarinetist Anthony McGill, who just appeared as one of the coveted “Mosher guest artists” featured in a special showcase recital this summer. McGill will be joined by another Music Academy alum, pianist Gloria Chien, with whom McGill has collaborated for 15 years. The pair recently released an album featuring a premiere recording by composer Jessie Montgomery, who, in another Academy connection, has been a composer on campus and had her new work Hymn for Everyone premiered by the Academy Festival Orchestra at The Granada Theatre in July.

On an administrative note, the McGill concert will represent the first official concert attended by the Academy’s newly appointed President and CEO Shauna Quill, who takes the reins after long-standing head Scott Reed’s retirement from the post.

For the third and final concert of the Mariposa Series, violinist Frank Huang — another Academy alum, who also happens to now be concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic — appears at Hahn Hall on Monday, November 20, with a musical pillar of the Santa Barbara community: Natasha Kislenko. Kislenko, who boasts an international life and profile of her own, boasts the unique status as a Music Academy faculty member, Santa Barbara Symphony pianist, and UCSB professor.

All told, the autumnal series makes for a rich addition to the already healthy slate of classical programming in Santa Barbara this time of year, while extending the curatorial reach of the Music Academy into the heretofore “dark” season.

For more information, see musicacademy.org/mariposa.