SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) — Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra are on a California tour working with music students at Santa Barbara’s Music Academy of the West.

A partnership between the orchestra and the academy was launched in 2018 when five-section principals spent 10 days teaching and picking a dozen students as fellows to work with the orchestra in London the following January.

Rattle did not accompany the London Symphony on its summer 2019 trip to California, and then the pandemic disrupted the world.

But after being locked down for so long, Rattle says it's “kind of a miracle" that the company's California concert tours are happening.