Westmont Magazine Music, Theater and Art Showcase Great Works

The Westmont orchestra, Westmont College Festival Theatre and Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art present acclaimed work. 

The Westmont Orchestra celebrates President’s Day by performing at the fourth annual 2017 Capital Orchestra Festival at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. with other accomplished symphony  orchestras selected for the Feb. 20 event.

“This opportunity brings Westmont to a national platform and gives us visibility on the East Coast,” says Michael Shasberger, Adams professor of music and worship and orchestra conductor. The repertoire will include Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, “Huapango” by Jose Pablo Moncayo and Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger: Prelude.” They will also perform during a church service in Washington, D.C.

Shakespeare@400.SantaBarbara celebrated the playwright on the 400th anniversary of his death with a series of performances, including three plays, by an international coalition of theaters and arts organizations. Westmont screened the Complete Walk, 37 short films originally shown in London in April 2016 created by Shakespeare’s Globe London. “This is the only U.S. site that has attempted to show the entire Complete Walk project,” says John Blondell, professor of theater arts. Each film explores one of Shakespeare’s plays and includes scenes shot in the locations he imagined when he wrote them. Westmont College Festival Theatre also revived its production of “As You Like It” as part of the November festival.

The Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art opened 2016 with an exhibition showcasing work by some of the most recognized names in the annals of art. “Barbizon, Realism, and Impressionism in France” featured more than two dozen works from the Lady Leslie Ridley-Tree collection, including prominent artists associated with the famed Barbizon, realism and impressionism schools, including Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet, Charles- François Daubigny, Narcisse Virgile Díaz de la Peña, Charles-Emile Jacque, Henri Matisse, Jean-François Millet, and Théodore Rousseau. The museum produced an extensive and beautifully illustrated catalogue that features a tribute to Lady Ridley-Tree and entries for each artist in the exhibition.