Remarkable Hindustani slide guitarist V.M. Bhatt.

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LONG AND WINDING ROAD: As Sonny Rollins capped off another memorable, enchanted, and secretly experimental evening at Campbell Hall recently—his third visit here in the past decade—the tenor player was in hale spirits. After wending his way through the concert’s most cagey and “outside” solo, refusing to address the specific blues chord changes beneath his quixotic journey of a solo, Rollins told the crowd, “I hope we get to meet once again along the winding roads of life.” With that final solo of the night, some of us were nursing the bittersweet knowledge that this was also the finale of Santa Barbara’s too-brief jazz concert calendar for the season.

Jazz has a decent presence in town—if you apply that oft-heard qualifier, “for a town this size” (aka FATTS). So far this year, we’ve experienced strong, if sparing, musical winds. The Blue Note 7’s Campbell Hall show in January captivated with its fresh/archival treatments from the 60-year-old Blue Note Records songbook. Bass giant Ron Carter’s trio, with pianist Mulgrew Miller and guitarist Russell Malone, gave straight-ahead jazz a good name at the Lobero, and post-fusion energies rode high when the Five Peace Band—featuring a rare meeting between guitar guru John McLaughlin and keyboardist Chick Corea—shook Campbell Hall’s rafters. As for Rollins—he tends to rule any season he is part of.

We’ve come to expect modest doses of high-grade jazz, at the Lobero and Campbell Hall, but the current economic dark clouds may change the game next season. Jazz fans want more. But would they/we support more regular doses of live jazz in Santa Barbara? Hope keeps springing eternal.

FRINGE PRODUCTS: Diana Krall, Quiet Nights (Verve). Diana Krall’s return to the Santa Barbara Bowl (August 23) is good news, considering the Bowl’s generally jazz-lean programming, and because she’s on a roll. Krall’s new CD, Quiet Nights, is a warmly seductive and soul-soothing rematch with the great arranger Claus Ogerman, with whom she last collaborated on 2001’s beauteous The Look of Love. Quiet Nights opens auspiciously, with a ravishing, cool take on “Where or When” and the project’s twilight-hearted, balladic luster finds Krall putting her distinctive vocal stamp on “I’ve Grown Accustomed to His Face,” “Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry,” and a meltingly fine version of Jobim’s classic title track, lined in dreamy Ogerman-ized lushness. As Krall sings, entranced and entrancingly, Ogerman’s string-lined chart filters ingeniously through fleeting dissonances and implied emotional question marks. Krall and Ogerman really ought to go on meeting like this.

Melody Gardot, My One and Only Thrill (Verve). A new voice and face on the subtle-is-better scene (in Krall’s general emotional neighborhood), Melody Gardot has come out strongly, swingingly, and with a soft wit on an album produced by Larry Klein (an artful arbiter with understated female singers, i.e. Joni Mitchell, Madeleine Peyroux, and Luciana Souza). Gardot’s story intrigues: An accident debilitated her when she was 19, and she credits the power of music—and music therapy—with bringing her back to physical strength and artistic grace. On this lovely album, Vince Mendoza supplies his arranger’s smarts to the complementary strings. Gardot, whose wise original songs sound instantly classic, injects some smoky texture, purring vibrato, and femme fatale attitude, sounding like Peyroux’s tougher chanteuse-y sister, but mostly heeds the muse of understatement. She should be winning plenty of fans as she goes.

TO-DOINGS: Remarkable Hindustani slide guitarist V.M. Bhatt, closing the UCSB MultiCultural Center’s season on Saturday, hasn’t been a stranger in Santa Barbara. Bhatt has played UCSB a few times now, and also has recorded several projects up at the St. Anthony’s Seminary chapel for the Santa Barbara-based Water Lily Acoustics label, including a fascinating and well-received Indo-Americana duet with Ry Cooder, A Meeting by the River. Bhatt plays a customized guitar he calls the “Mohan Vina” and slithers, explores, and sings on the instrument in a way unlike any slide guitarist you’ve heard.

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