Santa Barbara audiences are familiar with what the virtuoso pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet has to offer. He’s been in orchestral and chamber settings on Santa Barbara stages and, on local/global screens, had his performances interwoven into such films as Wes Anderson’s lovably quirky The French Dispatch and the more serious business of Atonement.
Something slightly different this way comes with Thibaudet’s next Santa Barbara visit, when he engages in an intimate chamber music trio context at the Granada Theatre on Tuesday, October 10, the kickoff concert of the classical component of UCSB’s Arts & Lectures series. He will perform with the Georgia-born/Germany-based violinist List Batiashvili and French cellist Gautier Capuçon on the trio’s first U.S. tour, featuring a program of opuses by Haydn, Ravel, and Mendelssohn.
Born in Lyon, France, Thibaudet lives in Paris and also Los Angeles, where he’s extending his passion for education at the Colburn School while keeping connections to our own Music Academy. The latest entry in his 50-plus discography, mostly on the Decca label, is 2021’s Carte Blanche, an aptly-titled personal statement presenting favorite piano pieces previously unrecorded by the pianist. His broad tastes take him through music of Schubert, Chopin, Couperin, and onto left-of-standard fare music by Villa-Lobos, Gershwin, and Martin Gould’s “Boogie Woogie Etude.”