Porgy and Bess with Santa Barbara Symphony May 2015
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
As maestro Nir Kabaretti enters his second decade with the Santa Barbara Symphony, the time feels right not so much for retrospection as for celebration. Last Saturday night, the symphony’s executive director, David Pratt, announced from the Granada stage that Kabaretti has signed a contract to conduct the orchestra for at least another three years, and that’s very good news. His blend of personal warmth, intellectual rigor, and consummate musicianship has moved the organization forward on a number of fronts throughout his tenure, and thus the next three-year stint — or decade for that matter — promises to be a rich one.
The symphony’s season finale concert featured one of the ambitious yet community-centered collaborations that have become a Kabaretti specialty. A version of George and Ira Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess brought the orchestra together with two outstanding vocalists, soprano Laquita Mitchell and bass-baritone Michael Sumuel, and the Santa Barbara Choral Society under the direction of JoAnne Wasserman. Wasserman and Kabaretti have developed into a formidable team, and Saturday’s program may have been their most spectacular success yet. The combination of heartfelt musical virtuosity and Broadway razzle-dazzle on display hit just the right spot with a large and appreciative audience.
The first half of the program showed off another aspect of what the Santa Barbara Symphony has become under Kabaretti’s leadership — an exemplary orchestra for teasing out what’s most poetic and sophisticated in the American music that has grown up around the motion picture industry. Both the Arioso for Oboe, Percussion, and Strings of Dan Redfeld and the Symphony No. 2, Op. 30 of Howard Hanson participate in the cosmopolitan yet accessible style pioneered by other Americans such as George Gershwin and Elmer Bernstein.
Speaking of the Gershwin brothers, Porgy and Bess remains their greatest single contribution to American music. There’s no better love duet than “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” and Mitchell and Sumuel swung it to the rafters. The chorus sounded magnificent, as well, especially on the encore, “Oh Lawd, I’m on My Way.”
American baritone, Ralph Cato has travelled the world extensively, telling stories in song with his warm, clarion baritone voice.
Tenor, Benjamin Brecher has performed over fifty operatic roles with many of the world’s most prestigious opera companies, specializing in the high lying lyric tenor repertoire. He has performed 16 roles with New York City Opera alone. Career highlights include performances with Opera Orchestra of New York, L’Opera de Nice, Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, L’Opera de Montreal, Santa Fe Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, among many others. His orchestral solo repertoire includes Mozart, Handel, Orff, Bach, Haydn, as well as many performances of Britten. In 2000 he began performing the great Irish Tenor songs in a concert produced for him entitled A Celtic Celebration, Twenty years later, the show has become a North American hit with performances with 45 Symphonies in North America. Ben continues his discography having added his twelfth recording in 2016 Forgotten Liszt, with pianist Robert Koenig, and will record a new release in 2022 entitled “Three Centuries of Thomas Moore” including the music of Britten, Berlioz, and Sarah Gibson on MSR Classics. He is a Professor of Voice at University of California Santa Barbara, where he has served as the Head of Voice.
Tracy Van Fleet is pleased to return to the Santa Barbara Choral Society. As a soloist, she has performed with the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Lüneburg Symphony in Germany, Orquesta Filarmónica de Boca del Río in Mexico, Pasadena Symphony, Naples Philharmonic, Los Angeles Bach Festival, San Diego Chamber Orchestra, Colorado Philharmonic, USC Symphony and Chorus, and others. She has had many appearances with the Los Angeles Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Pacific Symphony, Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, Opera Pacific, San Diego Opera and Opera Colorado.
Born and raised in Southern California, April Amante is a versatile soprano with expertise and facility in repertoire spanning from early music to contemporary musical theater.