On Entertainment (Continued from page 11 11)) was in high school and even in college when I was performing. But I wasn’t very nervous yesterday, which was really nice. And it might be because I’m just more mature. It’s decades later and I’ve gone through many experiences where obviously I have to stay calm under pressure doing eye surgery and things like that. So, I think my nerves are pretty in check. Were you involved in choosing what you were going to play? Is the Mozart movement a favorite? Nir told me, ‘You can choose whatever is in your repertoire, something you’ve played before.’ And I said, ‘I don’t have a repertoire anymore.’ I asked for some suggestions that would work with the smaller orchestra they have to use during the pandemic and he offered some Mozart pieces. “Elvira Madigan” is probably the most famous one and I’ve always loved it. Honestly, I had the thought that if I could play that piece with a symphony in my lifetime it would be like a bucket list item... I’m trying to just enjoy the moment. When we were rehearsing, I was looking around at the symphony players who I have seen perform many times in the 13 years I’ve lived here. Seeing the beautiful ceiling at the Granada, playing on a concert grand piano, and just taking it all in – it is a really exciting event for me, an exciting little moment in my life. Can we switch gears and talk about what it means to you that the symphony is dedicating a concert to recognizing and honoring the medical community and even inviting you and other doctors to perform? It’s really wonderful because obviously it’s been a hard year in the medical profession – the hospital staff, the nurses, and especially doctors have been working in a completely different environment than we’ve ever had to where you could be putting your life at risk just for going to work. It was a bit scary for a while, and when we shut down and even stopped doing elective surgeries, I couldn’t operate for over a month and I was really going nuts. We couldn’t really even see people in the clinic. It’s great that the symphony is recognizing all the people in our community that have made sacrifices, whether it’s quarantining from their family to keep working or putting their lives at risk to help somebody, and dealing with not only the morbidity but the mortality of COVID and how emotionally draining and taxing that is. Everybody’s tired, not only the healthcare workers, from the emotional drain and potentially losing income and housing. So to me it’s really special for the symphony to give back to the healthcare workers and make them feel that what they’ve done is noticed and appreciated... Actually, it’s pretty fantastic that they’re still working, producing music because this pandemic hit musicians hard, too. I think we all miss live music.
Score!
Symphony Secures Leaders’ Services
Late last month, the Santa Barbara Symphony announced that three of its key leaders have committed to sticking around to guide and grow the organization over the next five years. That’s very good news during these troubled times when the pandemic has forced pivots that would make a ballerina dizzy, and many arts organizations are struggling to survive. Newly named President and CEO Kathryn R. Martin, who stepped in as interim chief two months after the pandemic took hold; veteran Music and Artistic Director Nir Kabaretti, who has conducted the ensemble since 2006; and Board President Janet Garufis, the longtime President and CEO of Montecito Bank and Trust have all committed to their leadership roles through 2026. The trio were part of the team that boldly
30 MONTECITO JOURNAL
found a way for the Symphony to be one of the few performing arts organizations in the country presenting performances that encompass socially-distanced orchestra members rehearsing, performing, and recording together in person. Their five-year visionary framework is expected to be announced in coming months.
UCSB’s Zoom-tastic Don Giovanni Opera-ting in the ‘New Reality’
More Mozart is headed our way this weekend as UCSB Opera Theatre and the Department of Music present an abridged two-act virtual video version of Don Giovanni on Friday, February 26. The production is helmed by Associate Professor Dr. Isabel Bayrakdarian, the star soprano who sang the love interest role of Zerlina in multiple productions herself and now directs a cast of graduate and undergraduate Voice Program students. The presentation represents a passion project that perhaps rivals the lust of the main character, a shameless seducer whose deeds lead to his demise over the course of a mere 24 hours. Directed by UCSB professor Dr. Isabel With no students actually on campus, pre- Bayrakdarian, an abridged version of paring to produce the opera via Zoom took Mozart’s two-act opera Don Giovanni a lot longer: many months dating back to the streams on Friday, February 26 fall quarter. Adapting proved quite a challenge even for the ever-optimistic Bayrakdarian. “The nature of opera is togetherness, which was totally tested in this process because the organic process of music creation takes place when we’re all in the same space and time. But of course all of a sudden that wasn’t possible. And there’s simply too much lag over Zoom for opera, where microseconds count. This way of doing opera is definitely a new frontier.” Bayrakdarian’s solution included positioning the action-oriented opera as more of a concert performance, and then employing a storyboard approach to tell the story – truncated from two and a half hours to less than 60 minutes – in a way that would be clear and still engage the audience watching online. “We started with the musical numbers, none of which is longer than four minutes, and cut out all of the recitativo because it’s almost impossible to have sung dialogue with a piano track,” she explained. “Instead we’ve got title cards with a brief explanation of what’s happened in a nutshell before the opera you’re about to hear just so your mind has a sense of the story that’s developing. And there are snippets of videos that show the different settings and visually lead the audience so you don’t get tired from the monotony of singers in boxes on your screen.” To keep the singers as close as possible to a cohesive unit, she engaged UCSB lecturer Dr. John Ballerino and doctoral student Erik Lawrence to create a piano track to serve as a constant, a link between the singers who were located all around the country and across the globe. But the director also sought to keep as much camaraderie among them as possible. “Group rehearsals had to change to intensive one-on-ones with each singer and the chorus,” she recalled. “But I’d have singers come to hear their colleagues’ coaching so that they could at least be inspired by each other’s artistry, even if they couldn’t join in.” Even more inspired was the choice to cast second-year doctoral student Valdis Jansons in the dual roles of the infamous Don Giovanni and his personal attendant Leporello. In the 90-second preview scene that was provided, Jansons proved his own perfect foil in the pivotal argument scene. “Psychologically, they are foils for each other, almost each other’s alter egos,” Bayrakdarian said. “Giovanni is so beyond any kind of moral consciousness or any fear of consequences while Leporello is the pragmatist and has a conscience with an approach to life where there’s karma for everything you do. Because of the COVID restrictions forcing us to have the production prerecorded, I thought it was a great opportunity to see the same person struggling with the internal battles. [In that scene], it’s hilarious to see on the screen the same singer arguing with himself.” Despite the opera having premiered more than 230 years ago, that internal battle is an ageless one, Bayrakdarian said, perhaps one that played out in our political arena in recent months. “At any moment we can, we can choose to be either good or evil… But I did not make any parallels or correlation for us when we were making the opera because it was really more music therapy. Especially Mozart, which is so refined and beautiful. It elevates your spirit. To me, singing Mozart is a complete spiritual transformation every single time. My hope is that I can convey that to the audience so that when they hear it, you get the feeling that
“My luck is so bad that if I bought a cemetery, people would stop dying.” – Rodney Dangerfield
25 February – 4 March 2021