ON the Beat | Eyes and Ears on the Fall Harvest

This edition of ON the Beat was originally emailed to subscribers on September 21, 2023. To receive Josef Woodard’s music newsletter in your inbox each Thursday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.

As of today (if you’re reading this on the column’s published date of September 21), fall has officially fallen. Santa Barbara’s lean population of deciduous trees mean that color-changing leaves don’t help delineate the season, but we get the hint from the live music calendar, which thickens with temptations this time of year.

Yes, the pop parade of concerts is in a steady, ongoing rotation, keeping audiences heading regularly to the Santa Barbara Bowl, the Lobero Theatre, SOhO, and elsewhere. But autumn brings us the deeper, headier stuff of jazz, classical, and slip-through-the-genre-cracks performances, courtesy of UCSB Arts & Lectures, CAMA, the Santa Barbara Symphony, Opera Santa Barbara, and more.

This seems like a ripe juncture for a selective and subjective list of fall highlights. Humbly submitted for your approval: an opinionated overview of 13 Shows that Matter. It does not necessarily reflect the opinions, political views, or taste values of the Santa Barbara Independent. But it very well may.

Jazz-wise, the music — in all its blessed variety — finally returns to town in the form of three concerts of a must-see nature. Twentysomething British jazz-pop wiz Jacob Collier — whose sometimes over-the-top gimmickry can detract from his serious musical chops and intentions — kicks off the A&L season at Campbell Hall on Sunday, October 1. On Monday, October 30, we’ll get another of the fated meetings of the Lobero — one of America’s greatest “jazz rooms” — and eminent guitarist Pat Metheny (somehow, the 69-year-old’s perennial youthfulness resists the term “eminence”).

And on December 8 at the Granada, we’ll get a holiday show and local debut from bedazzling new jazz sensation Samara Joy, a stunning young vocalist whose tradition-to-the-future majesty is winning multitudes of fans on contact. She was also the rare jazz artist (Esperanza Spalding was another) to win Best New Artist Grammy Award, this year.

Classical music comes on with a welcome downpour, starting with Opera Santa Barbara’s season premiere of the crowd-pleasing Carmen, (Granada, September 29 and October 1), followed another surefire crowd-pleaser, “Beethoven’s Ninth,” as mounted by the Santa Barbara Symphony in its opening concert, and Camerata Pacifica’s intriguing “Bach to Bolivia” program at Hahn Hall on October 20.

A one-two punch of modern classical piano mastery hits the calendar just before Thanksgiving, with the return engagements of Sir Stephen Hough (at the Lobero on November 16, a CAMA show) and, the following night, the much-buzzed-about Daniil Trifonov (at Campbell Hall on November 17). 

Veterans Rocking the Houses

In short order, we’re getting real time encounters with three great American bands upon whom the badge of “veteran” can be slapped. From the ’90s vintage, we suddenly have a late-breaking addition to the Bowl season with post-grunge legends the Foo Fighters, on Thursday, September 28. Though essentially seeded in Seattle, the band has Santa Barbara tentacles, thanks to hometown hero Chris Shiflett being in the band since 1999, and leader Dave Grohl’s assorted surprise cameos in town, from Muddy Waters to Velvet Jones to the Red Piano.

Wilco (left) and ZZ Top | Credit: Courtesy

Also with ‘90s roots, Wilco makes an always-welcome return to town, at the Arlington on Friday, October 13. Indomitably led by Jeff Tweedy, Chicago’s finest amalgamator of roots, lyrical and musical intelligence, and curveball delights also has SoCal connections, in Ojai resident and keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen, and spider-fingered guitarist Nels Cline was a Los Angeleno before NYC magnetized his restless soul. A week after Wilco at the Arlington, on Friday, October 20, Santa Barbara happily hosts the 1969-born Texan-sized myth of a band, ZZ Top. The saucy and irony-spiced boogie machine from the Lone Star still prevails, nationwide, after the 2021 passing of charter member bassist Dusty Hill.

Idiomatic Tweeners

In between-zone areas of the musical landscape, the fall concert crop includes category-fudging meta-bluegrass band Nickel Creek, which has played in town many times but whose A&L-hosted Granada show on Sunday, October 8 is something extra special. The band’s new album, Celebrants, is not only its best, most progressive and ambitious record to date, but it was birthed and bred right here in a Montecito compound during the pandemic. (See interview with member Chris Thile here).

And then there is the unreasonably gifted singer-banjoist-activist-musicologist-composer-phenom Rhiannon Giddens in the midst of an 805 trifecta of appearances. She was music director of June’s Ojai Music Festival and appears at Campbell Hall with her own band in the spring, but appears with another hat on, as director of the Silkroad Ensemble, bringing its “American Railroad” program to the Granada on November 9.

TO-DOINGS

Folk Orchestra of Santa Barbara goes live again and goes Medieval, with the latest program cooked up by intrepid leader and multi-instrumentalist Adam Phillips. They’ll play in the welcoming ambiences of Trinity Episcopal Church on Saturday, September 23 and Presidio Chapel on Sunday, September 24. Info here.

Jazz Road Trip Worth Taking

All committed — or dabbling or middling — jazz fans from Santa Barbara should consider making the drivable pilgrimage to the Monterey Jazz Festival, staging its 66th festival this weekend. The festival, the oldest continuous jazz fest in the world and, by many of our accounts, the “best in the west,” is a pleasant four-hour road trip away — and a great primer in what is making jazz tick at the moment.

Notable this year: it is the last year for bold and balance-oriented director Tim Jackson, something of a heroic figure in the jazz festival world for the past 30 years. The long artist roster list includes current mover and shaker Kris Davis (recent DownBeat cover subject), a commissioned work by profound jazz world luminary Ambrose Akinmusire (also featuring powerhouse Malian singer Oumou Sangare), multiple sets with artist-in-residence and neighborly guitar Prometheus John Scofield, Thundercat and many more.