Camerata Pacifica 25-26 Season of Shows Are Now On Sale 

Camerata Pacifica’s upcoming 36th season as Southern California’s pioneering chamber music collective features a sweeping lineup of classical and contemporary works. With eight programs from September 2025 through May 2026, this season promises daring performances and the launch of a monumental three-year Beethoven 32 project.

“Camerata Pacifica is known for keeping audiences on their toes with wide ranging programming both familiar and lesser known, and the 2025-26 season is no exception,” said founder and artistic director Adrian Spence. “We will explore the limitless scope of the chamber music repertoire, connecting with patrons at the four distinctive Southland venues where we perform — Santa Barbara’s Music Academy of the West, Thousand Oaks’ Janet and Ray Scherr Forum, San Marino’s The Huntington, and Downtown L.A.’s Zipper Hall.”

At the heart of the season is the launch of the Beethoven 32 project, in which Camerata Pacifica’s Principal Piano Gilles Vonsattel will perform all 32 of Beethoven’s sonatas in a blend of solo recitals and chamber programs, which are “imbued with profound humanity and artistic richness.” Among these sonatas is Beethoven’s thrilling “Hammerklavier Sonata, Op. 106,” which is “considered among the most demanding and monumental pieces in the solo piano repertoire.”

This season also features the premiere of a Camerata Pacifica–commissioned wind quartet by David Bruce, who is known for forging “a unique path in contemporary classical music with colorful, imaginative works inspired by the dances and heartfelt laments of gypsy music, flamenco, klezmer, and other folk traditions.”

Additional works will be played by noted contemporary artists such as Kenji Bunch, Thierry De Mey, María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir, and Pēteris Vasks.

Alongside these newer works, Camerata Pacifica will showcase chamber masterworks by Anton Arensky, Arno Babadjanian, Johannes Brahms, Frédéric Chopin, W.A. Mozart, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, and Dmitri Shostakovich.

Camerata Pacifica will debut several artists, including bassoonist Eleni Katz, who is praised as “thoughtful and expressive” by the San Diego Union Tribune, hornists David Byrd-Marrow, described as “the stunning and assured” by The New York Times, and Melia Badalian, principal horn with the Long Beach and Modesto symphonies, and percussionists Ayano Kataoka, known for her “brilliant and dynamic technique,” and Svet Stoyanov, praised for his “understated but unmistakable virtuosity” and “winning combination of gentleness and fluidity” by The New York Times.

Returning guest artists include violinist Alena Hove, cellist Santiago Cañón-Valencia, violists Che-Yen Chen and Meredith Crawford, clarinetist Pascal Archer, bassoonist William Wood, flutist Sébastian Jacot, hornist Ben Goldscheider, and percussionist Jason Treuting. 

There will also be appearances by beloved Camerata Pacifica members, such as violinist Paul Huang, cellist Ani Aznavoorian, oboist Nicholas Daniel, clarinetist Jose Franch-Ballester, percussionist Ji Hye Jung, and pianists Gilles Vonsattel and Irina Zahharenkova.

The season will run from September of this year through May 2026. The first Santa Barbara performance is on Friday, September 26 at Music Academy of the West. Single tickets are priced at $75 to $83 and subscriptions begin at $300. Tickets can be found at cameratapacifica.org.