ON the Beat | Academy Notes on the Horizon
Music Academy Reveals Another Summer Bounty of a Festival in Santa Barbara, with a New Team at the Helm
This edition of ON the Beat was originally emailed to subscribers on March 28, 2024. To receive Josef Woodard’s music newsletter in your inbox each Thursday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.
In many cities, the onset of summer for classical music fans and organizational machines translates to a downtime, a ripe period for a long summer’s nap amid the hectic pace of the autumn-to-spring concert season. Not so here in Santa Barbara for the past 75-plus years. Classical stars from all corners descend on our town, along with a dense schedule of concerts and events worth catching, and a gathering of fellows/students from top echelon sources globally.
Yes, summertime is the time when Music Academy (formerly Music Academy of the West) sweeps into the 805 and presents a looming overthrow of our classical cultural attentions, to which we say “bring it on.”
Last week, we got a season preview glimpse at what’s to come this summer, courtesy of a special preview, led by the new team of President/CEO Shauna Quill and Chief Artistic Officer Nate Bachhuber, following the departure of long-time head Scott Reed last year. The preview also teased us with a microconcert by the respected young pianist/composer Timo Andres. The site was Hahn Hall, on the idyllic grounds of the Academy’s Montecito home of Miraflores. In summary, the prospects for a busy and tempting summer festival run high, once again.
A concert or festival season preview always goes down easier in the presence of actual music — canned or, ideally, live — to line the proceedings (a practice the Santa Barbara Symphony has wisely followed in its preseason September previews).
At Hahn Hall, the famed Andres had arranged to swing by on his way south to the L.A. Phil’s innovative Green Umbrella series the following night. Here, he gave us a tasty sampling of a current major project, the complete Philip Glass Piano Etudes. He played the lilting Etude 5 and the stormily machine-like No. 6, two pieces which will be performed along with pianist Conor Hanick at Hahn Hall on July 13.
In other tantalizing piano news, the ever-engaging faculty member Jeremy Denk will give a special performance and discussion of the Concord Sonata of Charles Ives (in this, his 150th birthday year) on June 19, and Denk heads to the Granada for a special team-up with violinist, ageless, boy wonder Joshua Bell on July 3.
Our main tour guide for last week’s festival season preview was Bachhuber, former artistic administrator of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, making his first public appearance in his new role in Montecito. He said, “I am thrilled to be here, in no small part because of the mission of this organization and the moment it means for the fellows, for learning and growing. To me, it means that our job is to create transformative experiences, opportunities for experimentation, for play, for discovery and most widely, artistic experiences that engage our community in this incredibly beautiful and magical place.
“As we talk about this festival, it feels magical being here, for both of us.”
“We are the newbies,” Quill chimed in, with a grin, asserting that the fresh start will involve some evolving ideas and program, while also asking the audience to help keep them informed about standards and practices at the place.
One Academy program of special and international repute is its Voice program, following a legacy going back to early faculty legends Lotte Lehmann and Martial Singher and the recent tenure of Marilyn Horne as department head from 1997 to 2018 (the main building was named the Marilyn Horne Main House in 2016). The current heads are John Churchill and Sasha Cooke, with sterling resumés in their own right.
For the full opera production attraction of the Voice Program, the old beloved Carmen is riding back in town at the Granada on July 12 and 14, for the second time in less than a year, in the shadow of Opera Santa Barbara’s production last fall. This time around, the timing places this most famous of “Spanish” operas (albeit by the French composer Bizet) nipping at the heels of Fiesta, a k a “Old Spanish Days.”
Quill commented, “the strength of the program is why we received over 800 applicants for fellows. It’s quite something. We have a great program, and having it here in Santa Barbara is a huge part of what makes it special.”
Saturday nights at the Granada belong to the remarkable phenom of the Academy Festival Orchestra, made up of young musicians already of a high caliber and assembled into a temporary orchestra for a six-week shelf life. Concerts never fail to impress, especially with the help of some of the most renowned conductors anywhere, flown in for the fleeting occasion of leading and teaching the fellows.
This year’s list opens on June 22 with Osmo Vänskä leading Mahler’s “Songs of a Wayfarer” and Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2, and closes on August 3, with Hannu Lintu mounting Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 “Tragic.” But for this adventure-seeking listener’s money, the more exciting and outside-the-box evenings leap out for attention. June 29’s Anthony Parnther–led program features Stravinsky’s proto-Modernist masterpiece Rite of Spring and works by Black composer Florence Price and L.A.-based composer Joan Huang (widow of composer William Kraft, former Corwin Chair head at UCSB).
Also enticing and fresh, the July 27 program finds adventure-prone American conductor David Robertson leading the wondrous John Adams Violin Concerto — with the solo spotlight going to violin virtuoso Leila Josefowicz, who recently gave a recital at Hahn Hall — and Prokofiev’s too rarely-heard Symphony No. 5.
Other highlights of the festival include the annual fest-kicker concert by the Takacs Quartet (June 14), famed singer Lawrence Brownlee’s “Uprising/Rising Up” recital (July 27), and the Fauré Project — for Fauré’s centennial (July 5), on the typically full fest of events, performances, master classes, and more on the Academy calendar. The forward march of the Music Academy reminds us that some predictable perennial things are also beautiful things, making Santa Barbara life all the sweeter.
TO-DOINGS:
Funny how certain concert memories stick to the gray matter in ways we least expect. Take the night when Sonic Youth played Campbell Hall in 1990, a memorable show in its own musical right, but even more so in global political hindsight, coming as it did on the eve of the bombing of Baghdad and the launch of America’s entry into the first Gulf War.
All these years later, Sonic Youth remains an important pillar in the history of music (and as one of the great American bands making SST a great American indie label), and its individual members have gone on to individual achievements, including Kim Gordon, no longer the rock ‘n’ roll spouse of Thurston Moore, but with a strong identity to call her own. Her latest album is I’m a Man, an electro-post-punk-grunge-rap concoction of fever dreamy proportions. Catch Gordon at the Ventura Music Hall on Friday, March 29. I know I will.
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