A video excerpt from Nicole Cabell‘s performance at the Ventura Music Festival in 2008. Together with tenor Shawn Mathey, she will close this summer’s Festival on Saturday, May 12, 2012.

 If the video above is not showing, click the words SENSATIONAL SOPRANO NICOLE CABELL at the top of this post.

Daniel Kepl interviews Ventura‘s pride and joy, soprano Nicole Cabell, whose meteoric career surge since winning the BBC “Singer of the World” Competition in 2008 has thrilled opera lovers and opera newcomers alike. Joined by Ventura Music Festival Artistic Director Nuvi Mehta, the interview – one of four attempts to maintain a signal – is cut short, but the vibrant personalities of both artists is worth savoring. The too brief discussion is about the first half of Saturday’s program: Mozart arias strewn between movements of the composer’s Symphony No. 29.

 If the video above is not showing, click the words SENSATIONAL SOPRANO NICOLE CABELL  at the top of this post.

Daniel Kepl interviews Lawrence Dutton, violist with the Emerson String Quartet, just before an engagement a couple of days ago in Richmond, Virginia. The Emerson String Quartet will perform a fascinating program – the last string quartets of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven – at the Ventura Music Festival TUESDAY EVENING, May 8, 2012.

 

 

 

 

 

If the video above is not showing, click the words THE EMERSON STRING QUARTET  at the top of this post.

They left Havana in the early 1990′s during “The Special Period” of the Soviet Union‘s collapse and subsequent withdrawal of support for Cuba, which sent the island into a time of severe deprivation. The seven members of the band went their separate ways initially, but eventually found each other in Miami, forming the Latin jazz ensemble Tiempo Libre, which has been nominated for three Grammy’s, records exclusively for Sony Masterworks, and will host what promises to be a spectacular Cuban dance party on the lawn at Ventura College Sunday afternoon May 6, 2012 as part of the week-long Ventura Music Festival. Daniel Kepl interviews Tiempo Libre’s founder, Jorge Gómez, in Miami.

If the video above is not showing, click the words CUBAN LATIN JAZZ ENSEMBLE  at the top of this post.

Daniel Kepl interviews Nuvi Mehta, Artistic Director of the Ventura Music Festival, about the upcoming week of classical music and Latin jazz that will have Ventura dancing in the streets to Bach and Cuban rhythms.

 If the video above is not showing, click the words VENTURA MUSIC FESTIVAL  at the top of this post.

Daniel Kepl interviews cellist Stephen Harrison of the Palo Alto-based Ives Quartet about the program for their upcoming recital at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. The program includes a new string quartet by film composer Deborah Lurie.

 If the video above is not showing, click the words IVES STRING QUARTET  at the top of this post.

Daniel Kepl interviews Erica Bawek, CEO of Los Angeles-based Grandeza Mexicana Folk Ballet. The company is in residence on the Central Coast this weekend, April 20-232, 2012 performing for the Latino community – and all other interested community members in the region – free of charge. The final dance concert of the residency will be held at the Marjorie Luke Theatre at Santa Barbara Junior High School.

 If the video above is not showing, click the words GRANDEZA MEXICANA FOLK BALLET  at the top of this post.

Daniel Kepl interviews conductor Nir Kabaretti about the unique programming he has selected for the Santa Barbara Symphony concert on April 21, 22, 2012. The program opens with Study for String Orchestra, by Czech composer Pavel Haas, who was murdered at Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. Also on the program is Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, and Mozart’s Coronation Mass, with the Santa Barbara Choral Society.

If the video above is not showing, click the words SANTA BARBARA SYMPHONY’S APRIL 21,22, 2012 CONCERT at the top of this post.

My interview with choreographer Christina McCarthy about her new work Question, which will be performed by the students of Santa Barbara Festival Ballet on April 7, 2012 at the Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara, as part of the program FESTIVAL BALLET DANCES.

 If the video above is not showing, click the words SANTA BARBARA FESTIVAL BALLET  at the top of this post.

Daniel Kepl interviewed French-Canadian violinist Alexandre Da Costa on the eve of his March 17-18, 2012 performances with the Santa Barbara Symphony, under the baton of guest conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto, of Michael Daugherty‘s 2003 masterpiece “Fire and Blood,” a violin concerto inspired by Mexican painters Diego Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo, who spent two years (1932-1933) in Detroit while Rivera created a series of enormous murals entitled “Detroit Industry,” on a commission from Edsel Ford for the Detroit Institute of the Arts.

If the video above is not showing, click the words MICHAEL DAUGHERTY’S VIOLIN CONCERTO “FIRE AND BLOOD”  at the top of this post.

A video of Mr. Da Costa playing the first movement: VOLCANO

“In Joe Woodard’s recent review of Camerata Pacifica he excoriated Artistic Director Adrian Spence for ‘thrusting’ a musical introduction ‘into the sacred space of the actual concert.’ IT’S A DIFFERENT TIME JOE!”  ADRIAN SPENCE

Host Daniel Kepl chats informally with artists and arts executives throughout California. These ongoing conversations, previews and reviews, confirm California’s arts life is exciting and vigorous. Read a sampling of articles Mr. Kepl has written for the Santa Barbara News-Press.

 

If the video above is not showing, click the words CAMERATA PACIFICA – AND THE RUCKUS OVER “NO TALKING IN THE SACRED TEMPLE.”  at the top of this post.