Camerata Pacifica Launches Season With All-French Chamber Music Program

Camerata Pacifica launches its 2024-25 season with an all-French chamber program bursting with aural texture and musical bravura September 15-20, 2024, at four Southern California venues.

Debussy's brilliant and painterly Images, Book II, is bookended by Ravel's Sonata for Violin and Cello, a spare but captivating work with memorable melodies dedicated to Debussy, and Ravel's poetic Piano Trio in A Minor, a masterpiece that shimmers with harmonic originality.

The performances are Sunday, September 15, 3:00 pm, at Thousand Oaks' Janet and Ray Scherr Forum; Tuesday, September 17, 7:30 pm, at The Huntington's Rothenberg Hall in San Marino; Thursday, September 19, 8:00 pm, at Zipper Hall in Downtown Los Angeles; Friday, September 20, 7:00 pm, at Santa Barbara's Music Academy of the West.

Showcasing their virtuosity in the technically demanding repertoire are Paul Huang, Camerata Pacifica's Bob Christensen Chair in Violin, “a compelling podium presence” (Culture OC), and recipient of the 2015 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the 2017 Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists; Columbian cellist Santiago Cañón- Valencia, hailed as “technically flawless” (The Strad), named a 2022 BBC New Generation Artist, and Silver Medalist and “Audience Favorite” at the 2019 XVI International Tchaikovsky Competition; and Principal Piano Gilles Vonsattel, “a pianist well worth watching” (The New York Times). Camerata Pacifica is a chamber music collective renowned for its musical versatility and bold programming that illuminates the limitless scope of the chamber music repertoire.

“France has been a center of music and culture for centuries with Ravel and Debussy, among the country's most well know composers,” says Camerata Pacifica Artistic Director Adrian Spence. “They were acquaintances for more than a decade beginning in the 1890s. While they shared a mutual admiration for one another, they also found themselves as rivals on occasion.”

Camerata Pacifica's next program, October 25-30, 2024, traverses groundbreaking music from the 20th century and the dawn of the era with works by Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Mei Fukushima.

For tickets ($75 at The Huntington, Music Academy of the West, and Zipper Hall; $80 at Janet and Ray Scherr Forum) and information, visit www.cameratapacifica.org.

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