MA Top 30 Professional: Adrian Spence

Artistic Director
Camerata Pacifica

Hailing from a working-class family in Northern Ireland, Adrian Spence moved to the U.S. to study flute at Florida’s Stetson University with Geoffrey Gilbert, the renowned British pedagogue who numbered Sir James Galway among his students. But when he graduated and began freelancing with various ensembles, he chafed at the experience.

“I was indignant that the emphasis seemed to be on everything other than the music,” he recalls.

After moving to Santa Barbara, Spence decided to organize his own concert, of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, in 1990. The 25-year-old flutist needed $100,000 to put it on, a number so impossibly large “it seemed like a telephone number.” That concert would turn into Camerata Pacifica, a major concert series that performs not only in Santa Barbara—still its home base—but Thousand Oaks, San Marino, and Los Angeles.

Concerti grossi are no longer on the menu: The Camerata is now an established chamber music presenter with six-figure contributions very much within its grasp. The group films and uploads some of its concerts online in gorgeously produced, HD videos, and it commissions prolifically. The series has premiered 16 new works by eminences like Jake Heggie and Huang Ruo—both of whom, as Spence proudly notes, were commissioned by the Camerata long before their big breaks.

But the Camerata’s crowning achievement may be The Nightingale Channel. A collaboration with UCLA’s hospital system, the channel makes a rich trove of Camerata performances accessible to those on UCLA Health’s wi-fi network. That endeavor alone has raised nearly $2 million.

All of that is enough to make this Irishman an optimist for the state of classical music in this country. “I love the American model of philanthropy—it’s more durable. We’ve seen that repeatedly through the Great Recession and Covid-19; our donors stick with us,” Spence says. “This is a golden age for classical music, and we should realize that we’re in the middle of it.”