Santa Barbara Music Club Free Holiday Concert

SANTA BARBARA MUSIC CLUB HOLIDAY CONCERT AND RECEPTION

The Santa Barbara Music Club’s annual Holiday Concert and Reception is back!  On Saturday, December 9, the Santa Barbara Music Club presents a festive and varied concert at First United Methodist Church, 305 E. Anapamu St, Santa Barbara.  This concert features guitarists David and Joseph Malvinni performing works by Fernando Sor, Joaquin Rodrigo, and Leo Brouwer; duo pianists Tachell Gerbert and Bradley Gregory playing Libby Larsen’s A Day (2014) and Gavel Patter (2004), and selection of works performed by the Adelfos Ensemble, directed by Temmo Korisheli. The concert begins at 3 PM, and admission is free.  All concert goers are invited to a reception immediately following the concert.  

David Malvinni, ethnomusicologist and classical guitarist, has written books and articles on Roma (Gypsy) music and its appropriation in classical music, the Grateful Dead’s improvisational rock, and the Rolling Stones’s brand of Americana (2016). In addition to teaching in the UCSB Music Department (where he completed his Ph.D.) as an Ethnomusicology Lecturer, he teaches as an adjunct professor in Music and Ethnic Studies at SBCC. He also serves on the Board and Concert Committee of the Santa Barbara Music Club. David studied classical guitar with noted Segovia pupil Phillip de Fremery, and completed advanced studies with him at Amherst. Master classes include Eliot Fisk (NEC and Mozarteum) and Oscar Ghiglia (Basel). 

Joey Malvinni, classical guitarist, began his guitar studies at age four with his father. Already a virtuoso player, he has honed his performance level in masterclasses throughout the USA and Europe, including the Chigiana (Siena, Italy), Mozarteum (Salzburg, Austria), and Boston GuitarFest. This past summer (2023) he returned to all three master classes, and also gave a recital at the first annual Eliot Fisk guitar seminar in Granada, Spain. In November of 2022 he gave his first full recital, as he was invited to play a solo concert of Spanish guitar music at UC Santa Barbara as part of the World Music Series. As the winner of the Santa Barbara Symphony concerto competition, he was honored to perform the first movement of the Castelnuovo Tedesco Guitar Concerto with conductor Nir Karberetti and the SB Symphony in May 2021. Joey enjoys coding and chess and aspires to be a concert classical guitarist with a career in computer science.  

Tachell Gerbert and Bradley Gregory, duo pianists, have reputations as both concert performers and teachers, and established their piano teaching studio in Thousand Oaks in 1986. Prizewinners in the Performing Arts Scholarship Foundation Competition, they are active members of the Music Teachers’ Association of California (MTAC). They each received BM Degrees from the San Francisco Conservatory and MM Degrees from UCSB, with emphasis in piano ensemble. While studying at UCSB with Dr. Wendell Nelson they were introduced to the music of Emma Lou Diemer, as the Variations: Homage to Ravel, Schönberg, and May Aufderheide was written for Dr. Nelson and his wife Marjorie. Tachell and Bradley have performed this work in Italy and Japan as well as in the U.S., and in 1996 gave the premiere performance of Diemer’s duo piano work, Norteamexispanicumsake, which was composed for them.

The Adelfos Ensemble was founded in 2004 as a men’s a-cappella ensemble and pursued that path until 2010, when it became a mixed voice choral ensemble. The ensemble’s goal is to offer the best of a-cappella and other choral music to audiences in the Santa Barbara area through live performances, radio broadcasts, and recordings. The group programs a broad repertoire of music spanning more than a millennium, from ancient chant and Renaissance motets to folksong arrangements and contemporary works. Adelfos Ensemble exists to explore the wide world of choral literature and, as the Santa Barbara News-Press observed, to “move right and left of center in the choral tradition.”

Director Temmo Korisheli is an active performer in many musical styles, especially medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque. Recent early-music engagements have included concerts with Ensemble Ciaramella in Los Angeles, Victoria, and New York, and with the Texas Early Music Project in Austin. He has been on staff with the Amherst Early Music Festival of New England for the past 22 years, where he has collaborated with many luminaries of the early-music world; he also serves as bursar of the Festival. Mr. Korisheli has appeared as soloist with ensembles such as the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, the New York Collegium under Andrew Parrott, and regional oratorio societies; as a guest artist with several university early music programs around the state and beyond; and sang for many years in the UCSB Cappella Cordina. He is a founding member of the UCSB Middle East Ensemble, sings frequently in the Opera Santa Barbara Chorus, and plays clawhammer banjo. This December, he celebrates 20 seasons of spreading Christmas cheer with the Santa Barbara Holiday Carollers. Mr. Korisheli is assistant music director at All Saints’-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Montecito. He holds the MA and PhD (ABD) degrees in historical musicology from UCSB, where he studied with Alejandro Planchart and William Prizer and where he presently supervises the Music Library.

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Santa Barbara Music Club concerts display a wonderful diversity of historical musical periods and compositional styles, including beloved masterworks and exciting new and seldom-heard repertoire.  

 Of the series, the Santa Barbara Independent exclaimed:  “A beautiful day, a beautiful room, beautiful music … who could ask for more?” and Gerald Carpenter in Noozhawk.com declared, “Every Santa Barbara Music Club concert that I have ever attended has been a sensory joy as well as a consciousness expansion.” 

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 A valued cultural resource in the community since 1969, the Music Club’s mission is threefold: 

 (1) Presentation of an annual series of concerts, free to the public. 

 (2) Aiding and encouraging musical education by the disbursement of scholarships to talented local music students. 

 (3) Presentation of community outreach activities, including bringing great music to residents of area retirement homes. 

For information on this or other Santa Barbara Music Club programs and performing artists, visit SBMusicClub.org.