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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Symphony Shifts Concerts to Grow Audience

The musical and educational nonprofit New West Symphony, based in Thousand Oaks, is changing concert venues for its upcoming 25th season. For the first time ever, the group will perform its flagship Masterpiece Series concerts at Rancho Campana Performing Arts Center at Rancho Campana High School in Camarillo. The orchestra will continue hosting Masterpiece shows at Bank of America Performing Arts Center in the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza as it has done for more than two decades, but the partnership with Rancho Campana makes Camarillo the new home for its Sunday matinee concerts, the first of which will be on Oct. 6. Sunday matinees were formerly held at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center. The series will consist of 12 concerts, six at each venue, held between October and May, led by the symphony’s new Music Director Michael Christie, the Grammy-winning conductor of Mason Bates’ acclaimed opera, “The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs.” Another new Valleyside offering from the symphony is a series of outdoor screenings of popular films with the performance of live soundtrack music. The first was “Titanic,” held over the summer at the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts at California State University – Northridge, a symphony concert venue since 2016. The next iteration will be “Selma” in February 2020, with the symphony performing the Oscar-winning score composed by Jason Moran, the artistic director for jazz at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. “San Fernando Valley has become an important geographic market for NWS,” Chief Executive Natalia Staneva told the Business Journal. “We’ve developed over the years donors and contributors in the Valley, and we believe that our relationships will deepen there in upcoming years.” October will be the first time the symphony performs live music in Camarillo, but the organization has long had a presence in the neighborhood through its philanthropic programs. These include youth development programs such as the Laby Harmony Project, a free after-school music ensemble designed for underserved students from pre-kindergarten through high school, and the Music Van, a “musical petting zoo” that brings orchestral instruments to third- through fifth-grade classrooms as a way to spark students’ interest in classical music. Staneva said the upcoming concerts in Camarillo and Northridge will open up a new line of paying subscribers for New West Symphony comprising Valley residents reluctant to trek to Thousand Oaks for a show. “We’re always looking for opportunities to broaden our reach and to bring world-class music to new audiences,” she said. “As we celebrate our 25th anniversary, we’re looking for creative ways to do that and to further our presence in (Valley) communities.”

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