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All things, good and otherwise, come to an end, and so comes the closing measures of this year's 78th annual Music Academy of the West (MAW) festival. This eight-week pageantry, which transforms the normally fallow summer season into a time resplendent with classical music in Santa Barbara, will be suitably capped off with the grand finale of Mahler's epic Symphony No. 3 at The Granada Theatre on Saturday night, August 9.
The reliably sturdy and precision-geared Academy Festival Orchestra -- comprised of musicians only in town for eight weeks -- will be led by conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya, a respected maestro with an international résumé. In the vocal component, mezzo-soprano Julia Holoman takes the lead, with some assistance from the Sing! children's chorus.
Come prepared to settle into the late romantic landscape of Mahler's 100-ish-minute opus, often described as the longest symphony in the standard repertoire (there are longer models from under the "standard repertoire" radar). Mahler's Third was finished in 1898, literally just prior to the dawn of the 20th century and the composer-conductor's 40th birthday. On the flipside of the fin de siècle, his music expanded into more mold-breaking terrain, justifying his status as a gateway drug to 20th century music. In the land of the Third, late 19th-century orchestral manners are given a genuinely vast canvas, à la Mahler.
My idea of a good time on a July Friday night in Santa Barbara: grab (or gently cajole) a significant (or non-significant) other, head over to procure a three-pack from East Beach Tacos (for me, a spicy grilled shrimp, Gangnam style, and banh mi) and head over to your self-made picnic on the lush grounds of the Music Academy of the West's Miraflores estate. Post-picnic, sink into musical fare in the on-campus Hahn Hall, a superb recital hall by any measure. Gustatory/cultural mission accomplished.
On a recent Friday night, as part of the happily dense program thicket of MAW's summer festival, featured fascinating and sometimes "ink-still-wet" music by living composers Kamala Sankaram and Huang Ruo, also in-house to speak about their music. It was part of a bright new concept in the Academy programming, "Composers & Conversation," celebrating contemporary work by composers who are around and available for a stage talk.
This concert also gave due spotlight to the Academy's voice program, renowned far and wide, which had then recently also been showcased in a rich and tangy production of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Granada. In the first half, the composers presented songs commissioned by and performed here by the Voice program's co-head, mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, along with co-head John Churchwell at the piano. Sanakaram's "Listen," based on Mark Campbell's text and addressing pandemic alienation and the importance of empathy, draws on a lyrical, para-Broadway-ish musical language. Ruo's "The Work of Angels" -- about Chinese incarceration at San Francisco's Angel Island -- followed a more tonally and emotionally restless course, with stabbing percussive piano parts under plaintive and jagged melodic lines.
Actual world premieres showed up after intermission. In Ruo's case, we heard three luminous songs from The Monkey King, a new opera premiering in San Francisco this fall. The assured vocal leads of soprano Ruoxi Peng and tenor Zihao Liu, and with the Sing! chorus in tow, were spotlighted in the composer's affecting synthesis of traditional Chinese musical values and contemporary music modes, flecked with minimalism on Ruo's own terms.
In another effective culture-crossing feat, Indian-American composer Sankaram's Naidu Songs, also a world premiere, manages to meld western classical style with Hindustani and Carnatic modes and ragas. It's an organically musical and moving piece, east meets west division.
This was also a concert in which the bookend pieces on the program, by composers of the non-living kind, commanded attention and expanded awareness of lesser-known repertoire. To open, for instance, we dipped into the ever-refreshing pool of music by Ravel -- thankfully given extra loving care in the festival, from "Boléro" on deeper into the catalogue. His little-known but ethereally lovely "Chanson madécasses," sensitively sung by mezzo-soprano Anastasia Minashvili and backed with a flute-cello-piano instrumentation, set an inviting stage for what was to come that night.
From further down in the realm of music deserving greater recognition, the concert's closer was Max Bruch's rapturous and refined 1891-vintage "Siechentrost-Lieder," plucked out of the archives by Churchwell, who also played piano. Sopranos Helen Kim and Xinshu Li (a bright light in Don Giovanni) offered a persuasive and nuanced reading of the five-song opus, which qualifies as one of the buried treasures heard this summer, via the Academy.
On the picnic front, there is one remaining opportunity this year to indulge in the dine-and-listen plan -- the "Collaborative Piano Spotlight" tonight, August 7.
Speaking of good programming ideas whose time has come, the next morning, a healthy crowd of folks showed up to the Plaza del Mar bandshell in Pershing Park for a short and delectable all-ages-and-taste geared new program "Brass at the Bandshelll." The still fairly newly renovated music stage, dating back to 1919, is a genuine jewel of a performance space open to the public in the best way. The Music Academy's new connection with the outdoor theater, across Cabrillo Boulevard from the WPA-era Los Baños pool, is a shining example of the Academy's efforts to interact with the community, and buck residual impressions of the institution as an elitist classical outpost on the Montecito hill.
On this Saturday morning, an audience of a vast age spread, from infants to listeners of the "certain age" category, settled onto the lawn, fringed by vendors, the famed "balloon man," face painting, and the Santa Barbara Symphony's "Instrument Exploration Station" -- a k a instrument petting zoo. We got a crisply performed hour-long program including the audience pleasing Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story suite, but also more serious musical ventures, of the sort you wouldn't normally hear in American bandshell brass music culture going back to Sousa.
A tenet of Academy fellows led by trombonist/faculty member Weston Sprott gave spotlight and gleaming form to Jan Koetsier's Symphony for Brass (1980), with a compelling orchestral approach applied to the brass clan. Living composer Jasmine Barnes's "The Boroughs,"pays tribute to said boroughs of N.Y.C., in a fittingly multi-sectional and kaleidoscopic design. It's a challenging ride of a score, handled with expected brio and precision by the young musicians onstage in the park.
And did we mention free McConnell's ice cream in the bargain?
This week at SOhO, one of the notable shows finds former Santa Barbaran Tina Schlieske returning, on Friday, August 8, following last year's appearance in jazz mode at the Lobero Theatre. She'll be appearing this time with her band inventively called the Graceland Exiles, with Sister Laura and the Mends opening (Laura being Tina's sibling).