Serious Music Goes Off Holiday

As sure as fall falls, orchestral culture has reentered the local calendar, specifically in the city’s acknowledged orchestral home of The Granada Theatre — and through the aegis of different hosts. Last Saturday, the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) graced the Granada stage, with violin soloist Patricia Kopatchinskaja aboard, part of the UCSB Arts & Lectures season.

This coming weekend (Oct. 19-20), on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, the Santa Barbara Symphony (SBS) launches its concert season (coincidentally, spotlighting Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, also performed last weekend by the LPO). One night later, October 21, the international orchestra-presenting CAMA group kick-starts its own new concert season with a special Monday night orchestra night out, featuring the world-renowned Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

Santa Barbara Symphony’s 72nd season, led by long-standing maestro Nir Kabaretti, is built on the stuff of crowd-pleasing standard repertoire, between Tchaikovsky’s Fourth and the ever-popular Rodrigo Concerto de Aranjuez, with guitarist Pablo Sáinz-Villegas returning to do the guitar soloist honors. The program’s “Tchaikovsky Immersion” element also includes noted late local composer Emma Lou Diemer’s Homage to Tchaikovsky, commissioned by the Symphony in 2001. Diemer, who died at age 96 this year, was one of the most celebrated and prolific of Santa Barbara–based composers, also known as a masterful organist and composer of organ music.

Going forward into the 2024-25 roster, the Symphony’s carefully curated and diversified season presents programs with the telling monikers French Connection (Nov. 17), Mozart Marathon (Jan. 18 and 19), Chaplin’s Masterpiece @ 100, The Gold Rush (Feb. 15 and 16), The Seven Deadly Sins (the Weill/Brecht classic, on Mar. 22 and 23), Brahms’s Requiem, a Community Collaboration (Apr. 26 and 27), and Gil Shaham Weekend (May 17 and 18).

Monday night at the Granada, LCO — considered one of the world’s finest chamber orchestras — returns to town, again at CAMA’s invitation. Current maestro Jaime Martin leads the refined orchestra in a program of Haydn’s Symphony No. 6 “Le matin,” Brahms’ Symphony No. 2, and a special showcase of Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer, arranged by Schoenberg and here sung by highly regarded baritone Thomas Bauer.

CAMA’s orchestral parade continues with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (Nov. 12), a welcome repeat visit from the London Symphony Orchestra (Feb. 18), the inclusivity-minded Black and ethnically diverse Chineke! Orchestra (Apr. 3), and a grand finale with the Los Angeles Philharmonic (May 9). The L.A. Phil has appeared in CAMA seasons since its birth in 1919, and this year’s appearance gains distinction through its highly regarded key figures — L.A. Phil conductor emeritus Esa-Pekka Salonen and pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard — and a refreshingly unusual program of French masters from different eras and musical attitudes, Pierre Boulez and Debussy. 

As for CAMA’s concurrent chamber music sibling Masterseries, at the Lobero Theatre, the list includes notable pianists Garrick Ohlsson (Jan. 23) and Yefim Bronfman (Apr. 9). The series also sports notable worldly violinists with Santa Barbara regional connections: Anne Akiko Meyers (Nov. 22), and the irrepressible Gilles Apap (Mar. 8), who incidentally once held down — and mischievously shook up — the concertmaster chair of the Santa Barbara Symphony.

For more info on SBS, click here, and CAMA, click here.