Santiago Rodriguez

Carolyn Rodriguez sparked a fourth-quarter run that gave Santiago High School a 37-30 Garden Grove League girls' basketball victory over Kennedy Wednesday at Santiago. Although Rodriguez, a senior guard, scored only four points, she had four steals, four rebounds and two assists during the final five minutes. During that span, the Cavaliers (12-4 overall, 6-2 in league) turned a three-point lead into a nine-point advantage. Senior Center Carolyn Burns led Santiago with 16 points and 12 rebounds.

Rancho Santiago's Kyle Evans and Cypress' Augie Ojeda were selected as co-most valuable players and Kirk Irvine of Rancho Santiago was selected the pitcher of the year by the Orange Empire Conference baseball coaches. Evans, a sophomore first baseman from Katella High, hit .429 with 17 doubles, nine home runs and drove in 47 runs. Ojeda, a sophomore shortstop from Downey Pius X High, batted .313 and scored 54 runs in 44 games.

Ed Summers, president of the Ventura Chamber Music Festival, was a familiar face at the third annual event, which closed last Sunday. He introduced the concerts, along with deputy mayor Rosa Lee Measures, and thanked sponsors, generally keeping the wheels greased. After intermission at the recital of pianist Santiago Rodriguez last Thursday at the Church of Religious Science, Summers stumbled onto the unique charm of this increasingly impressive musical event.

Chamber music, says Santiago Rodriguez, is easy: "I play with people I like." The 35-year old musician, winner of a passel of international piano-competitions, an active touring artist and a member of the faculty at the University of Maryland since 1980, is certainly playing with people he likes this week. Tonight at Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena, Rodriguez appears in a trio with veteran violinist Ruggiero Ricci and cellist Nathaniel Rosen.

The 1987-88 season of the Ambassador International Cultural Foundation--a season in which the foundation will present more than 150 events at Ambassador and Pasadena Civic Auditoriums in Pasadena--will feature first-time Pasadena appearances by, among others, L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Moscow Ballet, the Central Philharmonic of China and the Georgian Chamber Orchestra of Tbilisi. It will also offer return engagements by a number of major artists and attractions.

Jockey Dusty Stimpson, who scored the biggest win of his career less than a month ago aboard Your First Moon in the $1,256,600 Los Alamitos Million, was killed early Tuesday morning in a single-car accident. The cause of the accident, which occurred as Stimpson and his girlfriend, Jody Behunin, were returning home from a New Year's Eve concert in Bakersfield, is under investigation.

The Ventura Chamber Music Festival began humbly enough three years ago, as a five-day adjunct to the then-fledgling Ventura Chamber Orchestra's season. As of 1998, the chamber orchestra has withered, but the festival has taken on a life of its own. The fourth and most ambitious event so far kicks off next Thursday and includes 30 events running through May 10.

The Seattle Mariners did everything they could to hand the Angels a victory, short of providing a police escort to accompany the winning run to the plate, and the Angels fumbled it away like so many of those balls the Mariners booted in the final two innings Wednesday.

The Bitran brothers and their friend were getting hugged all over town. The brothers--Saul, Aron and Alvaro--and Javier Montiel, members of Quarteto Latinoamericano, were the official artists in residence of this year's Ventura Chamber Music Festival, which ended Sunday. Over the 10 days and five performances that they lived, ate and traveled among us, the quartet, and other musicians and composers, were continually bombarded by unbridled, uninhibited enthusiasm.

Each weekday morning, a piano tuner from California mounts his bicycle and sets out for a music school three miles away to pursue an obsession--the seeding of Cuba with decent pianos. Appalled by the condition of Cuba's piano stock during a visit last year, Ben Treuhaft, 48, launched a nationwide "Send-a-Piano-to-Cuba" campaign in the United States. He managed to collect 22 plus an organ.