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Santa Barbara, CA (December 9, 2025) – Camerata Pacifica, considered one of the nation’s leading chamber music collectives and noted for its musical versatility and bold programming, has appointed three new members to its Board of Directors, announced Board Chair Kimberley Valentine. They include Betsy Blanchard Chess (Ventura), an arts manager; Cheryl Shields, (El Dorado Hills), a business executive in the environmental and waste services industries; and Sandra Tillisch Svoboda (Santa Barbara), editor-in-chief of Orchid Digest.
“We’re delighted to welcome Betsy Blanchard Chess, Cheryl Shields, and Sandra Tillisch Svoboda to Camerata Pacifica’s Board of Directors,” says Valentine. “They bring extensive professional and volunteer leadership experience to Camerata Pacifica. Their passion and commitment to the arts will help foster the organization’s mission to share exceptional chamber music with the community through live performances in Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Los Angeles counties as well as videos from past performances that are available free of charge to patients in hospitals around the country through Camerata Pacifica’s noted The Nightingale Channel.”
Betsy Blanchard Chess (Ventura), who was born into a Santa Paula pioneer ranching family, grew up with a desire to understand and preserve Ventura County agriculture and the rich history of the region. She has a keen awareness and respect for the contributions of the past as they enrich the future and continues her family’s deep commitment to community involvement and support. Chess has written extensively on Ventura County agricultural and business history and, in 1988, became editor and publisher of The Broadcaster Magazine for the Farm Bureau of Ventura County. In 2004, the magazine was expanded to include Santa Barbara County and renamed Central Coast Farm & Ranch. She retired from the magazine in 2013. Chess has had a concurrent career as an arts manager and volunteer, serving as Executive Director of New West Symphony, interim Executive Director for the Rubicon Theatre, and Director of Development for the Museum of Ventura County. In a volunteer capacity, she is a past president of the Rotary Club of Ventura, past president of the Ventura Music Festival, and currently sits on the board of the Museum. She was also a member of the SeeAg board of directors, which promotes agricultural awareness among young people in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, and served as a Cultural Affairs Commissioner for the City of Ventura. In 2017, Chess joined the board of the Limoneira Company, only the third woman on the board in the company’s 135-year history. In 2006, Chess was honored as A Woman of Vision by the Ventura County Interfaith Ministerial Association, was named 2014 Ventura County Volunteer of the Year by the Association of Fundraising Professionals of Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties and was one of the recipients of the Ventura County Star’s 25 over 50 award. She has received multiple Paul Harris Fellowship Rotary awards. In 2021, Chess published a memoir, Daughter of the Land: Growing up in the Citrus Capital of the World, about the history of her family and the citrus industry in Ventura County. In 2023, she was appointed by the Governor to the board of the Ventura County Fair.
Cheryl Shields (El Dorado Hills) was born in San Francisco and raised in Reno, Nevada. She graduated from Utah State University with a degree in forest management and earned a Master of Business Administration from Golden Gate University in San Francisco. Her professional career has focused primarily on the environmental and waste services industries in California. Shields has expertise in land use planning, public relations, regulatory/environmental compliance, permitting, legislative liaison, and project management for large scale interstate utility transmission line projects and for large and small waste facility projects, including landfills, materials recovery facilities, composting operations, disposal collection and energy recovery projects. She has resided across the west, including stints in Utah, Idaho, Seattle, Sacramento and Los Angeles. Although she currently resides in El Dorado Hills, CA, Shields still maintains extensive ties to the Los Angeles region, where she continues to spend considerable time. Her first experience with Camerata Pacifica was in March 2022, when she attended a concert in San Marino. She says she was struck by the quality of the program and the musicians as well as the intimate nature of the performance and the “conversation” between the musicians themselves and with the audience. Shields currently serves on the boards of two other non-profit organizations – the Serrano Fire Safe Council in El Dorado Hills, where she performs home hardening and defensible space assessments for her community; and Riva Club USA, a group of vintage wooden Riva boat owners dedicated to the restoration and preservation of classic Italian Riva boats designed and built in Sarnico, Italy.
Sandra Tillisch Svoboda (Santa Barbara), a Minnesota native, moved to California after graduating from Macalester College with a degree in nursing. Since moving to Santa Barbara, she has volunteered for numerous community organization, serving on the boards of Calm and Planned Parenthood and as president of the Sansum Diabetes Research Institute Board. A devoted orchid enthusiast as well, Svoboda is editor-in-chief of the Orchid Digest, an international orchid journal. She has served as president of the boards of the Orchid Digest, the American Orchid Society, and the World Orchid Conference, and was the manager of the Santa Barbara International Orchid Show for several years. Music is also of major importance to her. Svoboda, fan of Camerata Pacifica since it first performed in churches decades ago, has commissioned two works for the chamber music collective.
For information on Camerata Pacifica, please visit http://www.cameratapacifica.org.
Camerata Pacifica, considered one of the nation’s leading chamber ensembles, has been hailed as “innovative and intrepid” (The Daily Telegraph), “visceral and powerful” (The Economist). Its considerable commissioning portfolio includes more than 20 works by such established and rising composers as John Harbison, Jake Heggie, Huang Ruo, Lera Auerbach, Bright Sheng, Ian Wilson, David Bruce, Libby Larsen, John Luther Adams, Clarice Assad and Niloufar Nourbakhsh. The chamber collective has also been lauded for its warm and engaging rapport with audiences, bringing context and immediacy to the music it presents. Based in Santa Barbara, California, the ensemble enjoys a busy performance schedule throughout Southern California and beyond. Camerata Pacifica’s flagship annual series showcases its exceptional musicians as well as a range of distinguished guest artists. Each program is structured as a week-long residency with the ensemble performing in four Southern California locales: The Huntington’s Rothenberg Hall in San Marino; Colburn School’s Zipper Hall in downtown Los Angeles;Janet and Ray Scherr Forum in Thousand Oaks; and Santa Barbara’s Music Academy of the West. The chamber ensemble has previously toured to Hong Kong and appeared at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., Morgan Library & Museum in New York City, and major concert halls in London, Dublin and Belfast. Camerata Pacifica was founded by Artistic Director Adrian Spence, an acclaimed “high-flying flautist” (The Irish Times) applauded for his “unstoppable energy, his organizational genius, his taste in music and musicians” (Noozhawk). A native of Northern Ireland, Spence has keen artistic sensibilities that are evident in every aspect of Camerata Pacifica, from the ensemble’s stellar roster of international chamber artists and thoughtfully curated musical offerings to its authentic connection with audiences. He also sets the tone for the deep comradery among the collective’s musicians, which is evident both on and off stage.
In addition to its busy performance schedule, Camerata Pacifica is committed to serving the community. In 2021, Camerata Pacifica, in collaboration with UCLA Health, developed The Nightingale Channel, a landmark resource for hospitals providing programming drawn from the ensemble’s extensive video library of its performances delivered via iPads to patient bedsides and care teams. Based on the well-documented positive effects of music in healing, The Nightingale Channel has been adopted by UCLA Health, UC Davis Health, Keck Medicine at USC, Loma Linda University Medical Center, City of Hope National Medical Center, and Augusta University Health, and is being introduced to other hospitals across the country.
