Camerata Pacifica uploaded Concert at Home No. 58, devoted entirely to the works of the breathtaking young Iranian composer, Niloufar Nourbakhsh, on Sunday, May 30.
Now, having provided us all with a staggering amount of wonderful music to solace our confinement during this terrible year of pandemic, Camerata Pacifica will take the summer off.
Not only that, they have placed all 58 Concerts at Home in a permanent archive at their YouTube channel, where they can be watched and heard, without charge, by anyone with a computer possessing a sound card.
The Camerata and their dynamic artistic director Adrian Spence have done us a great service in our time of need, and we owe them.
(This is about Camerata Pacifica, but I do not wish to slight the marvelous series of online Santa Barbara Symphony concerts curated by Maestro Nir Kabaretti, nor the cabaret-style presentations hosted by the Community Arts Music Association (CAMA), nor the theater-based broadcasts of the Ensemble Theater Company and the Santa Barbara City College Theater Group. We have been the beneficiaries of a citywide effort to keep us all engaged with the performing arts at a time when all the live venues have gone dark.)
The last two Concerts at Home (No. 57, which first aired May 23, features interviews with and selections from the oeuvre of the American composer, Libby Larsen) demonstrate the Camerata’s commitment to what Adrian calls “The Future of Classical Music;” that is, the future of a music scene centered on new music and living composers, as well as established “classics.”
When England’s King Edward VII got so fat he couldn’t button the bottom button of his vest, he said to his tailor and valet, “Lest us make of necessity a virtue” — and to this day, it remains the fashion for gentlemen to leave the lowest button of their waistcoats undone.
It seems to me this is exactly what Adrian has done in turning the challenge of the pandemic into an unique, not-to-be-missed, opportunity. The virtue of the Camerata’s virtuality can be assessed by considering the likelihood of you or me sitting still for an hour of music we have never heard before, all by the same composer.
Whereas, in the virtual format, we are free to space out our experience of Niloufar Nourbakhsh and Libby Larsen into our own personal comfort zones.
In a live concert, we can’t stand up and say, “I’d like to hear that again, please,” — for repeated listenings are the only way to turn strange sounds into music — but online we can play them again and again, like any recording, making sense of them at our own pace.
There are also extensive interviews with both composers. (For your comfort, you are well-advised to take one piece at a time, and to take each at long intervals, and of course, fill in the space between with other pieces from other concerts in the series.)
Simply go to the Camerata’s YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/user/CamerataPacifica, and let Adrian guide you from there.
— Gerald Carpenter covers the arts as a Noozhawk contributing writer. He can be reached at gerald.carpenter@gmail.com. The opinions expressed are his own.