The Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra has canceled the remainder of its 2025-26 season, and says it will fold for the “foreseeable future,” citing financial issues.
The orchestra has focused on bringing Baroque and Classical music to the Southern California region and beyond for years, performing on authentic period instruments or sometimes carefully crafted replicas.
Musica Angelica recently announced the expected departure of its longtime music director Martin Haselböck, which the ensemble had planned to celebrate with a farewell concert dubbed “Auf Wiedersehen Maestro Haselböck,” on March 25 at the First Congregational Church of Long Beach.
After two decades shaping the sound of Baroque music in Southern California, Martin Haselböck will take his final bow as music director of Musica Angelica with a special farewell benefit concert on March 25 at First Congregational Church of Long Beach. (Photo courtesy Musica Angelica).
Music director Martin Haselböck presents the Musica Angelica baroque orchestra at a previous concert. (Courtesy Musica Angelica)
The Musica Angelica gala in 2016 dressed the Pacific Ballroom in a European style. (Courtesy Long Beach Convention & Visitors Bureau)
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After two decades shaping the sound of Baroque music in Southern California, Martin Haselböck will take his final bow as music director of Musica Angelica with a special farewell benefit concert on March 25 at First Congregational Church of Long Beach. (Photo courtesy Musica Angelica).
But that event, along with any other Musica Angelica events planned for the remainder of the year, have been canceled. The organization’s website, as of Tuesday, March 17, has been wiped of its usual contents, leaving behind only a note announcing the cancellations.
Leslie Smith, a spokesperson for the organization, said in a Tuesday statement that Musica Angelica’s Board of Directors had made the decision to cancel the rest of the season because of its current financial positions.
“Like all nonprofit organizations, the board was continually balancing the rising costs of doing business, while maintaining excellent performances at an accessible ticket price amid the reality of a limited pool of charitable contributions,” Smith said. “In this case, once the financial situation became clear, the board acted quickly to protect the organization’s stakeholders and obligations.”
Alongside the cancellation of the 2025-26 season, Smith says the organization is effectively shutting down “for the foreseeable future.”
Aside from the concert in honor of Haselböck, Musica Angelica’s upcoming “St. Matthew Passion” performances will also not carry on. The First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, meanwhile, will take over the organization’s “Bach to the Future” concert, which is planned for March 27. Tickets already sold for that show will be honored, Musica Angelica said.
“This decision was made with a heavy heart, and we are forever grateful for your patronage and support these many years,” Musica Angelica said on its website. “Thank you to the musicians, supporters, and audiences who have sustained Musica Angelica’s mission of bringing the joy of Baroque music to our community.”
LBMA
At first glance, a vessel — a pot, a vase, a jar — is a simple object, a container meant to hold something else.
But across cultures and centuries, vessels have attracted artists again and again with their quiet shapes and symbolic possibilities, whether secular or sacred.
This layered potential is at the center of “Holding Time: The Works of Elyse Pignolet and MyungJin Kim,” opening Friday, March 20, at the Long Beach Museum of Art, 2300 E. Ocean Blvd.
The exhibition brings together two contemporary Southern California ceramicists whose work uses the familiar forms of vases, pots, tiles, and mirrors as surfaces for storytelling.
Though their visual styles diverge, both artists approach the vessel as more than a container. For these artists, their vessels become narrative spaces, places where cultural traditions and social commentary unfold.
Elyse Pignolet, a Long Beach–based artist with a studio at Angels Gate Cultural Center, often uses ceramics to examine political and social tensions. Drawing on her Filipino heritage and experiences living in an urban environment, Pignolet’s work frequently addresses themes of feminism, misogyny, and cultural stereotypes.
For MyungJin Kim, too, the vessel is a stage for a certain kind of world, a symbolic world drawn from both Eastern and Western traditions. Born in South Korea and trained at Seoul National University, Kim later relocated to LA, where her work evolved to incorporate cross-cultural influences.
Opening alongside “Holding Time” is “Why Paint a Landscape? Selections from the Permanent Collection,” a companion exhibition that poses a deceptively simple question drawn from art historian Joshua C. Taylor.
For much of art history, landscapes served merely as backdrops to religious or historical scenes. Only relatively recently did artists begin painting landscapes as subjects in their own right.
But why paint a landscape at all? The works gathered here offer multiple answers to Taylor’s question, revealing motivations that extend far beyond decoration. Landscape painting becomes a way to record a sense of place, explore the relationship between humans and nature, or simply linger in the very act of seeing.
Together, the two upcoming exhibitions at Long Beach Museum of Art offer a thoughtful pairing.
The opening reception begins at 5 p.m. Friday, March 20, inviting visitors to spend an evening on the bluff exploring vessels, landscapes, and the many ways artists give form to the stories we carry.
For more information, head to shorturl.at/3Pi8x.
Carpenter Center
High-flying acrobatics, pulsing percussion, and a true celebration of culture kicks off this Saturday, March 21 at 8 p.m. when Cirque Kalabanté brings “Afrique en Cirque” to Long Beach.
The performance, presented at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center, promises a spectacle blending gravity-defying circus feats with live music rooted in West African traditions.
Accompanied by live Afro-jazz, driving percussion, and the energetic yet lyrical sounds of the kora, the performers showcase remarkable athleticism.
The result is a performance reflecting both the physical rigor and joyful spirit of contemporary African circus arts.
Cirque Kalabanté and Kalabanté Productions was founded by Guinean-born multidisciplinary artist Yamoussa Bangoura, whose own journey into the world of circus arts began as a teenager in Conakry, Guinea during the 1990s.
Fascinated by performers he saw on European television, Bangoura began teaching himself acrobatics on beaches and open spaces near his home.
Additionally, he trained in the Nyamakala tradition of acrobatic performance practiced by the Fula people of West Africa, later joining Circus Baobab, Guinea’s pioneering national circus company, to tour throughout Africa and Europe.
Ever since Bangoura launched his own company in Montreal in 2007, Cirque Kalabanté has grown into an internationally touring ensemble, with many performers drawn from Bangoura’s extended family.
The company now performs across North America and around the world while also operating a studio and school in Montreal offering classes in African dance, drumming, and circus arts.
For audiences here in Long Beach, the draw of “Afrique en Cirque” is the breathtaking spectacle of it all: an exhilarating blend of music, movement, and physical artistry.
For more information, including how to purchase tickets, head to shorturl.at/ibJ33.