The Santa Barbara players aim to provide low-cost tickets for all concerts and complementary tickets for K-12 students. Ticket sales only cover about 30% of our costs, so please support our mission by donating. We are a 501(c)(3) organization, and your donation may be tax deductible.
Our first 2024-25 season concert opens on October 12 at 7:30pm, at the First United Methodist Church. The program includes Béla Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances, Grace Fisher’s Waltz of the Waves and A Critter Fable, and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony No. 3. The performance will be conducted by Mary Beth Rhodes-Woodruff, founder and director of the Santa Barbara Strings. Tickets are now available on the door for $20!
Our second concert will be in February 2025, conducted by Emmanuel Fratianni. The orchestra will be performing Claude Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque, Joseph Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne (Songs of the Auvergne) featuring soprano soloist April Amante, and Franz Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony No. 8.
The final concert of our season will be on April 12, 2025, at 7:30 p.m., also at Hahn Hall. The program includes Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto, in A minor, featuring soloist Pascal Salomon, and Felix Mendelssohn’s
Scottish Symphony No. 3. April’s concert will be conducted by Zig Reichwald, the Adams Professor of Music and Worship at Westmont College.
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The Santa Barbara players aim to provide low-cost tickets for all concerts and complementary tickets for K-12 students. Ticket sales only cover about 30% of our costs, so please support our mission by donating. We are a 501(c)(3) organization, and your donation may be tax deductible.
If you have a vehicle to dispose of, you can donate it to benefit the Santa Barbara Chamber Players here using CARS
Our Mission
The Santa Barbara Chamber Players (“SBCP”) was created during the pandemic when local musicians joined together to play for each other as live performances were cancelled throughout the region. Our aim is to grow audiences for chamber and orchestral music by bringing affordable, professional-quality musical performances of listener-accessible music to Santa Barbara County, especially for those under-served by other higher-cost options, such as students, seniors, and families. We offer free tickets to K-12 students and invite experienced high-school musicians to play with our orchestra. All concerts will be presented with local musicians taking advantage of the deep pool of talent in the Santa Barbara area.
Our Conductors
Conductor and composer Emmanuel Fratianni is a Santa Barbara resident who has led major ensembles worldwide such as the San Francisco Symphony, Boston Pops, National Symphony, Detroit, Houston, Baltimore Symphonies, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Spanish and Czech National Symphony Orchestras. An award-winning composer and arranger his music for interactive media has been performed by some of the finest orchestras, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.
Emmanuel Fratianni is an Italian and US citizen, fluent in English, French and Italian. He is also an active guest lecturer in both American and European music institutions in the subjects of music composition for film and visual media as well as multimedia symphonic music direction.
Mary Beth Rhodes-Woodruff grew up in Southern California and attended the New England Conservatory of Music and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, majoring in both chemistry and music. She then studied with Andres Cardenes, concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony at Carnegie Mellon University. Upon receiving her master’s degree, she began teaching at Biola University Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles and was Head of Chamber Music Studies, leading students on a chamber music concert tour of mainland China and soloed with the Biola Symphony Orchestra on a concert tour of Italy, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.
Since moving to Santa Barbara County, Ms. Woodruff founded Santa Barbara Strings where she is currently artistic director and conductor. She has performed with the Mainly Mozart Festival, the Pacific Symphony, Santa Barbara Symphony, Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, was concertmaster of the Santa Maria Philharmonic.
Siegwart “Zig” Reichwald holds the Adams Chair of Music and Worship at Westmont College. Previously, he was the Charles E. Daniels Distinguished Professor of Music at Converse College, where he served as the conductor of the Converse Symphony for 18 years. Dr. Reichwald is the author of The Genesis of Felix Mendelssohn’s Paulus (Scarecrow Press 2001) and Mendelssohn and the Genesis of the Protestant A Cappella Movement (Cambridge University Press, 2023). He also edited Mendelssohn in Performance (Indiana University Press, 2008), a collection of essays that, according to Choice, “does a superb job explaining the 19th-century sound environment of Felix Mendelssohn and his audiences,” and Nineteenth-Century Music Review suggests that it “should be on the shelf of every performer, scholar, and devotee of Mendelssohn’s music.” Dr. Reichwald is known as a pedagogue who has helped numerous students enter some of the finest graduate programs.
The Santa Barbara players aim to provide low-cost tickets for all concerts and complementary tickets for K-12 students. Please support our mission by donating. We are a 501(c)(3) organization, and your donation may be tax deductible.
Please subscribe to our newsletter to keep up-to-date with the SBCP and hear about future concerts
SBCP acknowledges the generous support of The Towbes Fund for the Performing Arts, a field of interest fund of the Santa Barbara Foundation, the Santa Barbara Bowl Foundation, the Music Academy, and CARS (Charitable Adult Rides & Services).
