ON the Beat | Chamber Music Lands within the 805, Ditto Jack and Willie
Chamber Music Days
Abruptly, chamber music is having a subject day within the 805. To be extra actual, make that three consecutive days, from three completely different and important sources within the space. The very time period “chamber” was, from 1977 to 2019, a distinguished function of the annual Lobero Theatre’s calendar, when the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra (SBCO) existed as Santa Barbara’s “different” orchestra on many an inspiring Tuesday evening.
Three years in the past, the SBCO was felled by fiscal forces, however a brand new Chamber Music Challenge, led by the orchestra’s long-standing maestro, Heiichiro Ohyama, rekindles fond recollections. Chamber Tuesday is again, within the type of a particular live performance that includes Ohyama as violist (the function during which he performed with the L.A. Phil) and particular visitor musicians. The October 18 opening of the intermittent sequence options Ohyama with pianist Lucille Chung, violinist Benjamin Beilman, and cellist Edward Arron taking up Dvořák’s Piano Trio No. 4 in E flat and Fauré’s Piano Quintet No. 1 in C minor. See lobero.org/events/lobero-theatre-chamber-music-project.
Sunday afternoon in Ojai brings on the tenth anniversary of the sequence often called Chamber on the Mountain, within the picturesque Logan Home of the Beatrice Wooden Heart for the Arts, in higher Ojai. Cellist Anita Graef and pianist Louise Chan carry out on this kick-off live performance on October 16, in a program starting from George Gershwin to Beethoven, Amy Seaside, Mendelssohn and Franck. See chamberonthemountain.com.
On Monday, October 17, one other long-standing and extremely advisable chamber custom begins a brand new season within the clement venue of Santa Barbara Museum of Artwork’s intimate Mary Craig Auditorium. This cherished sequence typically focuses on string quartets of some worldwide renown, which defines the Aeolus Quartet, serving up a meal of Beethoven, Schubert and up to date heroine Caroline Shaw. See sbma.net/events/aeolus-20221017.
Trying forward, the venerable Camerata Pacifica begins to kick up its personal chamber music mud and muster with its season-opening live performance on the Hahn Corridor on Friday, October 21. See cameratapacifica.org/concerts.
Hometown Boy Makes Good, on an Epic Scale
A distinguished and barely ominous signal is perched on the aspect of the Santa Barbara Bowl stage, studying “No Moshing or Crowd-Browsing.” We’re completely happy to report that the signal had zero relevance when Jack Johnson settled in for his eagerly anticipated two-night run there, though surf tradition is interwoven into his being and fan base, and the aspect stage social gathering resembled a mosh pit.
Each time Johnson performs the Bowl, it’s a special day, particularly after the pandemic’s rained-out stay music parade. He speaks to us straight, as one among showbiz’s extra down-to-earth mega-stars who by no means forgets his salad days enjoying at Roy, as a UCSB scholar obsessive about browsing, surf filmmaking, and, oh sure, making music on the aspect. His constitution member friends, drummer Adam Topol and bassist Merlo Podlewski, snugly match into and assist outline the Johnson sound. Zach Gill served up sonic items on classic keyboards within the margins and got here up entrance for a squeezebox solo — he’s serving to make the music world protected for accordion. The super-fine new album, Meet the Moonlight, was produced by the marginally cryptic and generously gifted Blake Mills, who got here out to sit down in for just a few tunes (For extra-credit listening pleasure, take a look at Mills’s sensible instrumental venture with Pino Palladino, Notes with Attachments, launched in 2021 and a quietly bedazzling jazz/not-jazz outing).
Late within the loose-ended Tuesday-night live performance final week, Johnson spun out his story of enjoying poker with Willie Nelson and pitifully shedding — the sport and his dough. First, Johnson performed Willie’s comedian (or is it comedian?) basic “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me Once I Die” earlier than launching into his personal witty “Willie Nelson Received Me Stoned and Stole all My Cash.” Jack Johnson’s saga has many angles, together with the wry tale-spinner.
The Willie Nelson Segue
Quick-forward barely to Sunday evening, when the outlaw nation/C&W deity Willie himself hit the stage of Paso Robles’ Vina Robles Amphitheatre, singing mentioned anthem to a cheerful and generally cowboy-behatted crowd, becoming a member of within the catchy refrain: “Roll me up and smoke me after I die.” Willie, the unique and tireless highway warrior, was greater than cabin-feverish over the lockdown, as reported in a latest New York Instances journal story, and he’s, effectively, on the highway once more. As he does. His longtime companion, his pianist sister Bobbie, has handed on, however his son Micah — a flexible expertise and a part-time crackpot — carries on the household connection within the band.
He didn’t make it to the Bowl this 12 months, however when he’s enjoying within the subsequent city — in a venue as stellar as Vina Robles, no much less — a pilgrimage is so as. Though he performs comparable, and compact units, no Willie live performance is identical, because of his jazz-musician-like impulse to embrace the second and phrasing, together with his iconic voice and on his fantastically battered, life-worn, nylon-stringed guitar.
Willie is getting older gracefully and with self-aware wit, as when his bandmate son Micah sings his track (its hook filched from Dad), “If I’m excessive after I die, I’m midway to heaven,” or when Willie sings, on his great new album A Stunning Time, “Dusty bottles pour finer wine.” Novelty songs and classics apart, he stays a heat-melting balladeer, as he demonstrated on his ageless “Angel Flying Too Near the Floor” and particularly “You Are All the time on My Thoughts.”
Whenever you’re a Willie fan, the love retains giving. Neglect the outdated adage “Willie for President.” Anyone will be president, apparently. I say “Willie for Pope.”
TO-DOINGS: A hearty fantastic Bowl season involves its shut, with the Wednesday, October 19, Demise Cab for Cutie present… The Linda Lindas, the celebrated and distinctive all-girl group outta Los Angeles, are subsequent up within the UCSB A&L season, at Campbell Corridor on Saturday, October 15 … Blues-soul grasp Robert Cray, a longtime Santa Ynez resident, does his personal “homecoming gig,” on the Solvang Competition Theater on Friday, October 14.
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