ON the Beat | Ojai Festival-ette on the Fly

This edition of ON the Beat was originally emailed to subscribers on November 9, 2023. To receive Josef Woodard’s music newsletter in your inbox each Thursday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.

Apart from the upended tradition and logistics of culture under COVID’s tyrannical reign, when we think of the mighty Ojai Music Festival, early June springs to mind. But wait: the globally famed contemporary-music-fueled festival is having a rare autumnal flowering this Saturday night at the Greenberg Center (Ojai Valley School). As part of the ambitious and broad-based (and broadly cast, in the streaming sense) California Festival program, involving a range of organizations around the gilded state, the Ojai Festival’s “Creative Lab” is an evening with some of the most intriguing “new music” fodder this fall, regionally.
        
In some way, the Saturday night outing can be viewed as a microcosmic sampler of what the festival is about, championing music of our time and the adventurers who make it — in composer and performer modes. More specifically, the music/musicians partly reflect particular energies experienced just in the past few festivals.

One of the principal composers on the program is Samuel Carl Adams, an important figure in the programming puzzle in the 2021 festival (bumped to September, for pandemic reasons), the 75th anniversary year, which was led by eminent American composer and eminent nice guy John Adams (father of Sam). Another highlight of 2021’s festival was young composer Dylan Mattingly, also present on this program, along with another ear-opening young composer, the Indian-American Reena Esmail, whose Ragamala features vocalist Saili Oak and the Zelter String Quartet. Among other plaudits, Esmail has proven her insight and east-west negotiations with work as composer-in-residence with the LA Master Chorale.

From the player’s corner, we have a return engagement from Conor Hanick, the technically and conceptually dexterous pianist who appeared in the 2022 edition directed by the AMOK. That June, he gave a stunning Sunday morning reading of the obscure solo piano jewel, Hans Otte’s Book of Sounds, and here will perform Adams’ eight-movement Etudes. Sidney Hopson will take the spotlight in Mattingly’s “After the Rain,” and the composer M.A. Tiesenga assumes the central role as electronics and hurdy-gurdy performer, alongside the Zelter, on Ganymedes.
        
All in all, the “Creative Lab” evening exerts a magnetic appeal to fans of new and newer music, pulling us away from an already busy weekend in our slice of the 805 pie.

Sir Stephen, with a Deserved Rose

Thanks to the wise counsel and hosting aegis of CAMA, Santa Barbara has been a periodic stopping point for one of the more intriguing and respected of living classical pianists, Sir Stephen Hough. We knew him pre-Sir.

On Thursday, November 16, Hough returns to the Lobero Theatre for his fifth showing since 2015 in CAMA’s chamber music-geared “Masterseries.” It also happens to be an unusually piano-enriched week: the offerings include a recital, the next night, by another current keyboard hero, the Russian Daniil Trifonov (at Campbell Hall on Friday, November 17). Hough’s program is a healthy, diverse diet, with Debussy, Scriabin, and Lizst from expected corners of the piano repertoire, but also an example of his work as composer in 2019’s “Partita,” and a sampling of his special way with the enigmatically beautiful music of the “Spanish Satie,” Frederic Mompou. To that end, check out this year’s stunning Mompou recording, Musica Callada here.

Van the Doublewide Orchestra Man

Van the Man (a k a Mr. Morrison) recently left his distinctive mark and stage behavior on the Santa Barbara Bowl property, bestowing hits and back-pocket mysticism on a venue he seems to savor. For a very different Morrison-esque experience, head on over to The Granada Theatre on Saturday, November 11, when the popular cover band Doublewide Kings serves up “Moondance,” a Morrison tribute evening, minus the aloof attitude or black Mercedes waiting to whisk them off into the night, post-encore.

Bumping up to the level of the Granada is, to be sure, a feather in the band’s cap, a step up (capacity-wise) from the Lobero and other sizable venues the Kings have played. But what makes this show doubly wide and special is that our own Santa Barbara Symphony will be on hand to flesh out the rock band format and help put Morrison’s music in some fancy contextual duds. This event is a first for the Symphony, which has admirably been branching out recently, and now takes on the “orchestra-bedecked pop” trend more common in urban centers like Los Angeles — where the L.A. Phil gets its rock on with celebrity pop acts at the Hollywood Bowl and Disney Hall.

To-Doings:

On my short list of Santa Barbara bands with the most bodacious names is The Idiomatiques. Idiomatically speaking, the lovable and sharp skilled “gypsy jazz” and retro-fitted aggregate has made the 805 safe for Django Reinhardt–esque guitaring and swinging accordion, among other timeless treats and originals, like seasoned croutons in the steamy Hot Club soup. In the band, fleet-fingered guitarist Craig Sharmat puts his special heat on the Django style lead guitar role, with Ray Bergstrom holding down the all-important rhythm guitar spot, along with young-at-hearty local veteran Kim Collins on bass and vocals, and ace accordionist Frank Petrelli (a spot formerly occupied by another accordion world main squeeze, Brian Mann).

The band has made a record or two, but the real proof is in the shimmying live pudding: catch the band in the spotlight of the Santa Barbara Jazz Society’s monthly Sunday afternoon shindig, this Sunday, November 12, at SOhO.

Borders are freely and musically crossed in the case of the current all-star quartet of Béla Fleck, Edgar Meyer, Zakir Hussain, and Rakesh Chaurasia, on tour to promote a tasty new album, As We Speak. They play Campbell Hall on Wednesday, November 15 (see story here). The show comes courtesy of UCSB Arts & Lectures.

Opera Santa Barbara pulls away from full-scale opera but pays due attention to one of the medium’s mythic figures, Maria Callas, with the program La Divina, at the Lobero Theater on Friday, November 10, and the Bank of America Performing Arts Center in Thousand Oaks on Sunday afternoon (see story here).