On Entertainment
A Symphonic Parade Through the States by Steven Libowitz
T
he Santa Barbara Symphony took a deep dive across the pond to immerse in Italian classical music for last month’s pair of concerts at the Granada. Music from the continental country was also the focus of three concerts spearheading the indoor part of the La Piazza festival around the corner at the Library Plaza last weekend, with works that included vastly different settings for Respighi’s “The Pines of Rome” (with festival founder Jacopo Giacopuzzi and Alvise Pascucci‘s four hands on piano ) and Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons (with the symphony’s concertmaster Jessica Guideri in a violin-piano duo rather than the accordion soloist with the orchestra). This weekend, April 18-19 at the Granada Theatre, Music and Artistic Director Nir Kabaretti steers the orchestra back to the USA with an all-American program encompassing four distinctly American composers across more than a century in celebration of America’s 250th birthday this summer. Our country is a lot younger than Italy, hence the more compressed time frame, but the program is designed to alight on touchstones that have served to shape and define America’s musical heritage. “We’re an American orchestra so it’s always nice to go to our own roots,” said the Israeli-born Kabaretti who spent many years conducting in Italy. “It’s not only part of our DNA, but it’s important that we play this music. There were lots of directions to go in, but I wanted to mix the familiar with pieces that might be new to our audience, match very well-known works with pieces that are very important, but maybe less known.” The “portrait of America in sound” Kabaretti came up with opens with Charles Ives’ “Three Places in New England,” an experimental New England work of nostal-
The Symphony’s An American in Paris show will be April 18-19 at the Granada Theatre (courtesy photo)
gia blending Civil War-era melodies, marching bands, hymns, competing rhythms, and a measure of the mild dissonance which Ives pioneered. The SB Symphony will be playing Ives’ piece for the first time since Kabaretti assumed leadership in 2007. “Ives was an important figure in the development of American music, the father in some ways, someone who inspired a lot of composers,” he said. “He was maybe the very first one to move away from the European tradition, a pioneer, a revolutionary in a way. The piece has parts that are very dark, but also includes patriotic songs of the time that are largely hidden. And it’s specifically about a place, similar to Respighi’s ‘The Pines of Rome’ that we played last month.”
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16 Montecito JOURNAL
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16 – 23 April 2026