Beginning in the 2000|01 season, CAMA launched a model elementary school music appreciation program at La Patera School in Goleta. In the 2003|04 season, Dr. David Malvinni began the development of a multimedia curriculum for the program. The three-year twenty-four-unit curriculum package, entitled A Classical Music Journey for Young People, combines the study of classical and folk music traditions with live performances at school music assemblies. Starting in the 2005|06 season, the program was made available to other Santa Barbara County schools through a docent program. CAMA Docents, trained by Dr. Malvinni and coordinated by Joan Crossland, have offered the program to more than a dozen elementary schools and in a version adapted for use in junior high school social studies classes. Dr. Malvinni also offers preview lectures for selected CAMA concerts through Santa Barbara City College’s Continuing Education Program.
In the 2000|01 season, CAMA Board Member Joan Benson, working with Co-Chairs Nancy Wall and Jennifer Burrows, founded The CAMA Fellows. The Fellows, a group of young music lovers, supported the CAMA Board’s efforts in bringing music education to youth in Santa Barbara. Fellows events included pre-concert dinners, musical “informances,” and events to support Santa Barbara’s youth in music education. The Fellows disbanded in 2006.
The 2001|02 Season saw the revival of CAMA’s Artist Series in a new partnership with Masterseries, originally founded in 1982 by Stephen Cloud and Michael Isador, and today presented at the Lobero Theatre. CAMA’s Masterseries further enfolds and continues the work of Esperia Foundation, which presented free concerts by world-class chamber musicians in Santa Barbara from 1985–2000. With a $500,000 endowment sponsorship from Esperia Foundation, CAMA’s Masterseries is able to provide an allotment of complimentary tickets to every Masterseries concert for non-traditional audiences, students and other community members.
The CAMA Women’s Board began hosting an Annual Garden Tour in the spring of 2002. Through 2007, the tour concluded with a “Celebrity Birdhouse Auction,” with silent and live auctions of birdhouses decorated or designed by local celebrities and artists.
In 2007, SAGE Publications pledged a $1.5 million gift to CAMA’s Endowment Campaign in support of CAMA’s orchestra series, today known as the International Series. In the 2008|09 season, the International Series moved from the Arlington Theatre back to The Granada. Kicking off CAMA’s tenure at the newly restored Granada was a concert on May 3, 2008 by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, its first there in 32 years. This concert also marked the twelfth and final appearance of Maestro Esa-Pekka Salonen in Santa Barbara as the LA Philharmonic’s Music Director.
Other notable concerts of the 2000s included performances by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields (three times) with Joshua Bell, Murray Perahia and Sir Neville Marriner, the Hungarian National Philharmonic with Zoltán Kocsis, the Czech Philharmonic with Vladimir Ashkenazy and Leoš Svárovský, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra with Herbert Blomstedt, the Royal Philharmonic with Daniele Gatti and Pinchas Zukerman, the San Francisco Symphony with Michael Tilson Thomas (twice), the Kirov Orchestra with Valery Gergiev, the London Philharmonic with Osmo Vänskä, the Pittsburgh Symphony with Sir Andrew Davis, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic with Nikolai Alexeev, the Academy of Ancient Music (twice) with Christopher Hogwood and Richard Egarr, the China Philharmonic and Shanghai Symphony, both directed by Long Yu; and more; plus recitals by violinists Itzhak Perlman (twice), Joshua Bell, Pinchas Zukerman, Hilary Hahn (twice), and Christian Tetzlaff, cellists Lynn Harrell, Matt Haimovitz, and Carter Brey, pianists Ivan Moravec, Radu Lupu, Krystian Zimerman, András Schiff (twice), Richard Goode, Alfred Brendel (twice), Stephen Hough (twice), Ingrid Fliter, and Piotr Anderszewski, sopranos Jessye Norman, Renée Fleming (three times), and Dawn Upshaw, mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli, countertenor David Daniels, bass Samuel Ramey and mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade, and appearances with orhestra by many more distinguished artists. Through Masterseries, CAMA presented its first concerts by string quartets since 1937, beginning with the Vermeer Quartet in 2003, then the Belcea Quartet and Juilliard String Quartet in 2006.
