October 15, 2025
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ON the Beat | Music Academy Notes, On Campus and On the Town




You know you’re in the full stride stage of the Music Academy of the West’s (MAW) eight-week summer music pageantry when the action shifts from its sylvan Montecitan campus to other parts around the town. Last week’s agenda found some impressive musical action on the Miraflores home turf of Hahn Hall, including a concert featuring violinist Glenn Dicterow and Saturday night’s illuminating chamber orchestra concert at the Hahn boasted Piazzolla, Poulenc, and an inspiring tribute treat to the late Sarah Gibson on the menu.

Meanwhile, on the town, MAW’s moments in the grandeur of The Granada Theatre have included Saturday night orchestra concerts and the widely popular Percussionfest (regrettably, I was out of town for what I’ve repeatedly heard was a stunner). A major festival highlight lands at the Granada this Friday night and Sunday afternoon, in the form of its always anticipated fully-staged opera-this year’s model being Mozart’s masterpiece Don Giovanni (see story here).

In other Academy-goes-to-town news, Sunday morning’s worship service at the Trinity Episcopal Church (a highly music-friendly room) featured young Academy fellow Andrew Vinther, who can also be heard in the Academy Orchestra and elsewhere. Vinther could be nimbly steering his double bass through duets with Trinity organist/music director Thomas Joyce, on scores by Handel, Amy Beach, and bits of Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 during communion. Praises be.


Mando-cito Clubbing

Music Academy of the West Music Note Gala | Photo: David Mendoza

On Friday night, the action shifted across the 101 from Miraflores to the Montecito Club, for the fundraising gala event (an event where, yes, price is an object). This year, the gala took to the scenery-endowed upper lawn of the swanky club, where more than 400 people dined with vigor, bid on auction items, and had the pleasure of hearing the Academy Festival Orchestra on a full stage. In the soloist spotlight was no less a musically gifted celebrity than down home mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile (of Nickel Creek, Punch Brothers, and Chris Thile fame).

Music Academy of the West President and CEO Shauna Quill | Photo: David Mendoza

Shauna Quill, the Academy’s new executive director, alluded to the great legacy of this world-renowned institution — founded in 1947 — and told the gathered diner/donors “it gives us great pleasure to be carrying this [tradition] forward, almost 80 years later.”

Thile, who showed the world that, beyond his naturally eclectic and post-bluegrass aplomb, he could heroically and lovingly interpret Bach on mandolin and was an ideal musician appealing across the aisles of taste. Reportedly, he had generously interacted with the Academy Fellows and even sat in with the veteran bluegrass Glendessary Jam faction while in town.

On the Montecito Club stage, the impish artist surveyed the lay of the event and described “a kind of a Harry Potter vibe,” and dubbed Bach “the greatest of all the greatest dead composers.” On Bach’s “Allegro” from Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor, joined by violinist Angeles Hoyos, Thile was the only musician onstage not reading music and dispatched his part with his customary “what me worry” Bach-ian moxie.

Next up was the sonorous and sensuous piece “And So” by composer dynamo Caroline Shaw, who has been part of the MAW faculty in the past and one who Thile called “one of my favorite composers.” An extended mandolin spotlight segued into the Punch Brothers’ punchy smart “Julep,” and a finale of the Bros.’ tune “My Oh My,” joined by the Academy-sponsored Sing! Children’s Chorus.

Music Academy of the West violin fellow Angeles Hoyos performs with guest artist Chris Thile and the Academy Gala Orchestra, conducted by Daniela Candillari | Photo: David Mendoza

Thile, ever gracious to hosts, journalists, musical allies, and other humans, praised the young Academy ranks onstage. “We had so much fun putting this together,” he gushed. “It’s amazing what talent you have under your noses. I firmly believe that they are going to change the face of music.” He’s one to talk.

And the ultimate fund-raising ante was … a tidy $750,000.

Glenn Dicterow, long the New York Phil concertmaster, has landed in Montecito for the summers, and was behind Wednesday’s “x2 Series Glenn Dicterow: Examined Heritage” program. Brahms’ Piano Quintet No. 3 in Minor was in its full and proper weight — via Dicterow, his violist wife Karen Dreyfus, cellist Alan Stepansky, and longtime Dicterow comrade, pianist Jonathan Feldman, and Robert Sierra’s “Songs from the Diaspora” gave a ripe forum for fellow musicians.

But the real highlight was a string trio by the 25-year-old Gideon Klein, one of the Jewish composers working in the Nazi’s Theresienstadt concentration camp, shipped to Auschwitz and his demise 10 days after penning this bright work. It’s a vibrant piece of music, with lively spirits and Eastern European harmonic spices, to taste.

Music Academy of the West Chamber Orchestra | Photo: Phil Channing

Daniela Candillari is one of many who are working overtime at the moment in the 805. She conducted the gala gang, will be leading the orchestra for Don Giovanni this weekend, and wielded the baton at Saturday’s Chamber Orchestra concert. The concert rightfully broadcast the strong and refreshingly non-mainstream program framing of music by “nuevo tango” architect Astor Piazzolla and “Les Six” composer Francis Poulenc. Both were beautifully represented, Piazzolla by his sumptuous, elegiac and sensual classic “Oblivion” and “La Grand Tango” (featuring a subtle yet dazzling lead by violist Richard O’Neill), and Poulenc by his ravishing and slyly witty “Sinfonietta,” after intermission.

But still, as with the Dicterow program, the secret treasure lurking in the program’s shadows almost stole the show. Tucked into the program was a well-deserved tribute to the late Sarah Gibson, in the form of a thrilling and colorful chamber orchestra work, “warp & weft.” She tragically died last year, aged 38, of cancer. Gibson was a MAW alum, a gifted pianist (Los Angeles’ “Piano Spheres” also paid tribute, just this Monday) who worked with the adventurous duo Hocket, a teacher (briefly at UCSB, where she led the Ensemble for Contemporary Music), and also a composer who began writing later in her short life.

Sarah Gibson | Photo: Courtesy

“Warp & weft,” its title a reference to weaving, was her first orchestral work, and hints at what might have been. She shows a great curiosity and sense of invention in interweaving colors and rhythmic elements in the orchestral “instrument,” marshalling waves of energy and tension/release impulses in a fresh way, with fleeting melodic gestures folded seamlessly into the overall fabric of the music. It was an ecstatic moment in the Hahn, tinged by sadness over the fate of the composer.

Following this “discovery” moment and poignant encounter, the Poulenc piece served as a perfect desert for a midsummer’s evening’s “serious music” diversion.

See you at the opera.


To-Doings:

After last week’s leap into the Kentucky-L.A. twang factory of Dwight Yoakum at the Santa Barbara Bowl, the venue changes up its jukebox on Friday, with the arrival of loveably tasty indie folk sensation CAAMP, outta’ Ohio. Among its infectious treats are “By and By,” “All the Debts I Owe,” and the charming new nugget “Let Things Go.” (link).

Post-Bowl, head over to SOhO for the official CAAMP after party, featuring Dead Set 805.

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