Officially, the Santa Barbara Symphony (SBS) won’t be live and in person until its season opener on October 14 and 15. Then, the musical prospects will fill The Granada Theatre stage with at least 200 musicians and singers, to the tune of Beethoven’s ever-popular Ninth Symphony. The Ninth is a trusty season-kickoff choice that the SBS last brought to the stage seven years ago.
But in recent years, the Symphony’s relationship with its admiring public and newcomers has included the increasingly popular “prequel” to the season. An hour-long Season Preview event took place at the Lobero Theatre this month, free and open to the public — with champagne in the celebrational mix.
The event lured out a larger crowd than usual. The word is out: Not only does the preview give an engaging bird’s-eye view of the season to come, with wise counsel and incisive commentaries from maestro/season planner Nir Kabaretti, but it also now includes a performance element, with fine musicians interspersed in the mix. High-caliber live performances make for an exponentially more persuasive and satisfying experience in any theater, let alone the Lobero’s enlightened ambience.
Gracing the stage this time out were the ever-versatile pianist Natasha Kislenko and mezzo-soprano Christina Pezzarossi Ramsey. Ramsey’s highlight was the darkly poignant Mahler song “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” (“I have been lost to the world”), a central piece in Joyce DiDonato’s conceptual EDEN, heard at the Granada earlier this year. Representing the active Santa Barbara Youth Symphony, young violinist and San Marcos High School senior Zahra Clark impressively took on Beethoven’s “Romance No. 2.”
Of course, the underlying mission here is to whet appetites for the musical bounty to come, and to evangelize to potential newcomers to the fold. To that end, SBS CEO and president Kathryn Martin’s boosterist introduction included the fact that the list of subscribers to date included 233 first-timers, which is “the opposite trend that arts organizations are experiencing around the country. We’re very proud of that.
“You are our symphony ambassadors,” she told the crowd, “spreading the word and introducing new friends to the symphony. I love it when, at intermission, a first-timer runs up to me and says, ‘Kathryn, you have to tell everybody. The symphony’s not that scary after all.’”
Kabaretti led the audience on a tour through the season, a typically diversified menu touching on many styles, eras, and tastes. He mentioned that, while large urban orchestras have the resources to present many different series, “for us, we thought the best way to feature seven different programs in a subscription concept would be really to offer as many genres as possible.”
By way of a mission statement, the maestro commented, “There are only two parameters that guide me: It has to be great music and it has to be written for symphony orchestra. We all know what it means. It’s about 150 to 200 musicians on stage with strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion, all very well-orchestrated. But we don’t care when the piece was written, you know, if you dance to it or it was written for an opera or for a film or by Mozart for the high society of Vienna.”
On the season’s list is a concert showcasing crossover trio Time for Three (Nov. 18-19); Opera at the Symphony (Jan. 20-21, 2024); Serenade for Romance, featuring violinist Sirena Huang (Feb. 17-18, 2024); and Mahler Meets Klezmer, featuring noted Klezmer-championing clarinetist David Krakauer (Apr. 20-21, 2024).
Off to the side of the official SBS season, the orchestra will lend itself to divergent upcoming projects, as an orchestral complement to the Doublewide Kings’ tribute to Van Morrison at the Granada on November 11, and as the pit orchestra for State Street Ballet’s production of Giselle at the Granada, October 21 and 22.
Kabaretti also pointed out, “Of course, in a season we also want to feature American music. We are an American orchestra. We want to give a chance to American musicians, composers, artists, guest artists.”
The American component of the season revisits Hollywood, fitting for an orchestra including many musicians who play studio sessions for “the industry.” Last season, John Williams was in the spotlight, and An Oscar Celebration (Mar. 16-17, 2024) is a cross-historical smorgasbord of film music. The Symphony will also present its classic New Year’s Eve program at the Granada, A Celebration of Pop, Rock & Broadway.
Closing out 2023-24 is a jazz-flavored return of the Marcus Roberts Trio, on the theme of Rhapsody in Blue @ 100. For a live small-plate taste, Kislenko served up a small plate of the Gershwin classic to satisfyingly round out the tour/show. —Josef Woodard
See thesymphony.org for more information.