Three Summer Festivals Reveal Artists, Repertory

Now that summer is actually upon us, our options are growing. This week, news from three of our California boutique festivals: artists and repertory are now complete.

In Santa Barbara, midsummer festivities given by the four-decade old Music Academy of the West will attract music-lovers of different stripes to the downtown Lobero Theatre.

A six-concert chamber music series will be offered Tuesday nights, July 4-Aug. 1, featuring the Academy’s distinguished faculty--among them violinists James Buswell, Zvi Zeitlin and Stuart Canin; violist Donald McInnes; cellist Stephen Kates, and pianists Jerome Lowenthal and Edward Auer--and students.

Under Lawrence Leighton Smith, the Academy’s music director and conductor, the Festival Orchestra will give four concerts on Saturday nights, July 15-Aug. 19.

Two operatic productions will be offered this year: Haydn’s “L’Infedelta Delusa,” will be sung July 21 and 22, and Smetana’s “Bartered Bride” will be given four times, Aug. 12-15. Both works will be sung in English.

Seven concerts in Smothers Theatre at Pepperdine University, Malibu, comprise the sixth summer season of the Strawberry Creek Music Festival. Music director and festival founder Yehuda Gilad will conduct five of these events, July 29-Aug. 12. Among the soloists will be violinists Eudice Shapiro and Mark Peskanov, and cellist Peter Rejto. The season proper will be preceded by a concert at the Arnold Schoenberg Institute at USC by the Strawberry Creek Chamber Players, July 26.

In the High Sierra, Music From Bear Valley offers its 21st summer season, July 29-Aug. 13. Now under the artistic direction of Carter Nice of the Sacramento Symphony, the festival promises 10 separate programs, beginning with an appearance by pop singer Glenn Yarbrough, and ending with a symphonic program. Among the soloists will be pianist Jeffrey Kahane, violinist Zina Schiff and harpist Susanna Mildonian. On Aug. 10 and 12, Thomas Conlin will conduct two performances of Puccini’s “Tosca,” with a cast including Starleigh Goltry, Gregory Kunde and Peter Van Derick.

BELLS: The centuries-old art of carillon playing will be featured on the fourth annual Music by the Tower series at UC Riverside this summer. The five Sunday evening concerts, beginning July 2, will offer recitals at the base of the university’s 161-foot bell tower, followed by performances by visiting ensembles.

One of only four cast-bronze bell carillons in California, UC Riverside’s 48-bell system is operated mechanically by a carillonneur.

The bells, which weigh between 28 and 5,091 pounds apiece, are played from a cabin just beneath the carillon. The carillonneur uses foot pedals as well as his fist to strike the keys.

According to UCR carillonneur David Christensen, cast-bell carillon systems are rarely installed because of their size, and their expensive and complex operation.

“There isn’t much opportunity to hear mechanical carillon playing in California because there are so few,” Christensen explained.

“The other cast-bell carillons, in Berkeley and Stanford, are so far away, and I don’t think UC Santa Barbara has a concert series, so our series is probably the only place you can go to see performances in Southern California.”

Since the first series in 1986, the UCR summer concerts have attracted large audiences. Last year, an average of 1,500 people attended each performance. The concerts, which are scheduled each Sunday in July at 5:45 p.m., will consist of 45-minute performances by four different carillonneurs.

BRIEFLY: New in the impresarial field is the New York-based Entertainment Corporation. Its birth was announced last week by its parent organization, the Entertainment Corp. Limited of London. Charles Dillingham, until recently executive director of American Ballet Theatre, is the president and chief executive officer of the new producer. . . . Donald Johanos, music director of the Honolulu Symphony, will open the new Hong Kong Cultural Center, in performances with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, next week. . . . The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has announced a new $600,000 program in support of period-instrument orchestras in the United States. The foundation says the aim of the program is to “enhance the institutional development of the orchestras, particularly their capacity to increase earned and contributed income in their communities.” Fourteen ongoing orchestras in nine states and the District of Columbia have been awarded two-year matching grants to help them “strengthen their administration and provide new performance opportunities.” Among the groups are the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra of San Francisco, and Banchetto Musicale of Boston.

Calendar intern Nicole Atkinson contributed to the research for this column.