Under normal, pre-pandemic circumstances, Santa Barbara’s “serious” music calendar takes a perennial holiday come August, as the Music Academy of the West lowers the curtain on its stellar two-month program in early August and the fall concert season is still lying in wait until late September and early October. Into this void, starting in 2016, there came the UCSB Summer Music Festival, a surprisingly rich, informed, and diverse burst of music to soothe the restless music lover.
Of course, all cultural bets and calendar-driven norms are off, or re-routed, in the current atmosphere, in which live music and cultural gatherings are in a deep freeze. And, like many festivals forced to rethink operations, the UCSB festival — which used to be a ripe excuse to get out of the house — is a good excuse to stay inside and check out its virtual offerings.
According to Raphael Radna, this year’s artistic director, “So many events in our community have been impacted this year, and the festival is definitely no exception. We've had to adapt rather quickly, but as we all know by now, that's just the nature of this unprecedented situation. While musical performances are taking place every day on various web platforms that streamline the process, some less-than-obvious considerations come up when you start thinking about how to produce a virtual event,” he continued. “In our case, this was complicated by the size of the festival, which is essentially an event of events, requiring coordination between many people with differing needs.”