Mendeleyev Virtual Concert Review

A dramatic reveal factor emerges early in the hour-long performance by the artist Mendeleyev kicking off the enticing new streaming “Virtual Concert Series” from the historic and intimate Marjorie Luke Theatre. Mendeleyev, a soulful pop-folkie singer-songwriter, handy with piano and guitar, opens his Luke set with jazz-colored piano musings, lost in the moment before a grand piano. It could be anywhere, for an audience of 500, or one.

For the second song, however, the barefoot baritone commands his steel-string acoustic guitar with syncopated, percussive gusto, and the camera angle is from deep onstage, looking out on an eerily empty Luke Theatre. We’re quickly reminded — as if needed — that life is far from normal: The lovely Luke is yet another prized venue gone dark.

Enter the streaming option, thankfully taken with this new series (Next up: Jackson Gillies and Tariqh Akoni, all free online at luketheatre.org). Mendeleyev, whose résumé includes a stint on TV’s The Voice (on John Legend’s team), is an ideal series-launcher. Unlike COVID-era staged concerts by Kenny Loggins and KT Tunstall at the Lobero, this series is crafted from pre-produced video shoots at the Luke (beautifully done by veteran image-maker David Bazemore).

Mendeleyev boasts a bold, wide-ranging vocal power, now intense, now subtle. He musters up his muscular folk/rock/pop aesthetic on “Show Me the Way Home” — with an animated component on screen and band backing tracks in the wings — and opens with a quasi-throat-singing drone on the gothic “Send Me Down to the Sea.” From the piano, he channels as much as sings “Beautiful Life,” a chant-like anthem of hope, valid anytime but tinged with life-under-COVID relevance on the line “all my friends are drifting away / I’ll see them again someday.”

Cover-wise, he moves easily from Dylan’s “Girl from the North Country” to a caffeinated take on Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide,” with Sly Stone’s “Everyday People” tapping the singer’s soulful side. Poignancy wins out at the end, with “Until Forever I Go,” from a new EP, Songs for Mom. He pays touching homage to his mother, who died of cancer in May 2019, with footage of Bristlecone Pine terrain behind the singer onstage, in a heartfelt ode.

Mendeleyev didn’t win The Voice, but, as heard from the Luke, this local proudly boasts a voice very much worth knowing.

Every day, the staff of the Santa Barbara Independent works hard to sort out truth from rumor and keep you informed of what’s happening across the entire Santa Barbara community. Now there’s a way to directly enable these efforts. Support the Independent by making a direct contribution or with a subscription to Indy+.