ON the Beat | Of Mariachi, Montecito and Music Academy’s Final Chord

This edition of ON the Beat was originally emailed to subscribers on August 3, 2023. To receive Josef Woodard’s music newsletter in your inbox each Thursday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.

Viva LaLa Landing

Through this weekend, revelry, street gastronomy, and generally approved party-time behavior descends on our town. Throngs, both locals and out-of-towners, will hit the Fiesta parade threading along Cabrillo Boulevard on Friday afternoon. They will flock the several Mercados (including a newcomer, El Mercado del Playa, at the Leadbetter Beach-adjacent Del Playa Stadium parking lot), for food, music, dance, and chilling/loitering. Cultural respects and rituals are also stirred into the mix — depending on one’s level of engagement in Santa Barbara’s annual “Old Spanish Days” tradition.

One of the great traditions during Fiesta time takes place up on the hill and apart from the official Fiesta zone, in the form of the Mariachi Festival, at the Santa Barbara Bowl on Saturday, August 5. Now up to its 26th annual event, and with a high-profile respectability in the Mariachi world far beyond Southern California, the epic mini-festival runs almost five hours and funnels profits into scholarships for college-bound youths. On the roster this year are Edith Marquez, El Mariachi del Divo, Majo Aguilar, Mariachi Femenil Nuevo Tecalitlan, Mariachi Angeles, and Mariachi Garibaldi.

Call it a celebration of “Old Jalisco Days,” given Mariachi’s birthplace in the mid-19th century. Info here.

It Takes a Village

For reasons valid and otherwise, Santa Barbara can be prone to having an inflated civic ego, basking in our reputation as a presumed paradise, as American cities go. For those of us in the 99 percent demographic, the impulse is partly a defense mechanism, a way of justifying the rigors and sacrifices of being able to afford or finagle to survive here. Our inflated self-regard is often validated by glowing reports from reputable sources. Two weeks ago, Architectural Digest rightly named the glorious Lobero Theatre one of the “11 Most Beautiful Theaters in the World.” Duh.

Last Sunday, the New York Times (which periodically pays visits to Santa Barbara as a go-to travel destination) ran a longish piece with the self-descriptive headline “What is it About Montecito?” (link).

In her report, writer Amy Larocca offers a smart, flyover observation of the famed village where excess is expected. She takes Lotusland into account, naturally, as well as the affluent and influencer-fueled playgrounds, the tony Rosewood compound, and the soon-to-be Thomas Keller-ized Coral Casino. She also sneaks in some wry comments in the reportorial margins, e.g. “Sometimes it’s so quiet and so pretty in Montecito that I find myself wondering if this is what it’s like to be dead.”

Larocca drops the right celebrity resident names — mostly a “first name basis” roster, including Oprah, Harry/Meghan, Gwyneth, Ellen (D), the allegedly semi-tyrannical Ty… But she forgot to mention a few names with musical connections, such as Montecito’s token jazz celebrity, the eminent Charles Lloyd, banjo champion (as in one who both plays well but champions the instruments) Steve Martin, and late-blooming rocker-troubadour Jeff Bridges. Incidental note: both Lloyd and Bridges have released albums on the great American Blue Note label. But that’s another story: what is it about the musical subplot of Montecito?

Music Academy Corner

Come to think of it, Larocca might well have at least dropped in mention of a deeply-ingrained musical component of Montecito, being the globally-celebrated summer program at the Music Academy (formerly Music Academy of the West, until a name-change during last year’s 75th anniversary season). The Academy’s homebase of the historic Miraflores Estate, virtually neighboring Ty Warner’s massive cliff-facing spread, is unquestionably the most musical piece of real estate in Montecito, with performance tendrils drifting into downtown venues of the Granada, the Lobero and elsewhere in Santa Barbara, proper.

The end is in sight for this summer’s eight-week smorgasbord of serious musical matters (plus some lighter froth, such as last week’s Cabaret 1979 –see Leslie Dinaberg’s review), closing out with the final Academy Festival Orchestra concert at the Granada Theater on Saturday, August 5. For anyone seeking to either avoid or add to this weekend’s Fiesta-ivities, get thee to the Granada.

Leading the young but not-surprisingly refined orchestra of Academy fellows is the respected Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu, whose resume includes guest spots with the Chicago and Boston orchestras, has a growing reputation in the opera field, and has earned love and Grammy nominations for a discography gamely showcasing the modernist likes of Lutoslawski, Ligeti, and the famed Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara.

Modernism is, however, not on the menu this Saturday night. To cap off the MA calendar, Lintu presents a program of two major works from different emotional/epochal places — Richard Strauss’ heroic Ein Heldenleben and Tchaikovsky’s definitively romantic Romeo and Juliet.

Some of the memorable Academy fare arrives with minimal fanfare or promotional splash. Last week, one of the charming peripheral Academy nights out (or in) took place in the elegant parlor-like Lehmann Hall inside the Miraflores, featuring members of the London Symphony Orchestra — which has had a partnership relationship with the Academy for a few years. Here was a chance to hear chamber music from lesser-trafficked repertoire of Villa-Lobos (featuring flutist Gareth Davis and cellist David Cohen), Benjamin Britten (Cohen and the Academy’s own Natasha Kislenko on piano), young Scottish-Greek composer Electra Perivolaris (from flutist Davis), a jazz snack from trombonist Peter Moore, and “a little Hadyn to close.” And it was a tasty, elegant bit of parlor music, at that.
        
Check the calendar here.