ON the Beat | Xmas Music X-ing

This edition of ON the Beat was originally emailed to subscribers on December 7, 2023. To receive Josef Woodard’s music newsletter in your inbox each Thursday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.

Given that December routinely “brings it on” in terms of holiday concerts and special events, you’d think there would be a traffic pile-up on the collective calendar. And yet the pillars of the season tend to have neatly owned particular weekends, as if to make planning easier for the habitual holiday music seekers among us.

Last weekend’s Big Event was the annual Westmont Christmas Festival, which took over The Granada Theatre for two programs at the dawn of December. This Saturday and Sunday, the main event status is handed over to the Santa Barbara Chorale Society, whose ecumenical and high-mid-low-ish cultural variety program known as “The Hallelujah Project” has happily affixed itself to the season. The glorious, JoAnne Wasserman–directed choral group mixes it up with such serious business of Bach’s “Magnificat” — and yes, a round of Handel’s “Hallelujah” machine — and family-friendly holiday fare. It is all capped off with the Santa stuffing of a reading/arrangement of The Night Before Christmas (this year’s celebrity reader is current Dishwalla lead singer Justin Fox).

From the notable celebrity visitors corner this week, we can look forward to young jazz sensation and Grammy-kissed Samara Joy’s local debut, with her program “A Joyful Holiday” and musical family in tow, at the Granada on Friday (see story here). Jose Feliciano, official contributor to the recurring Christmas music hit parade, plays the intimate Lobero on Monday.

Jumping ahead to the third weekend of December, the beloved a capella choir Quire of Voyces humbly grabs the spotlight for its annual Christmas program of Renaissance-to-yesterday music in the embrace of the St. Anthony’s King’s Chapel, December 16 and 17. (Also that weekend, the secular, Winter Solstice–worshipping tradition of The Revels, at the Lobero).

Other holiday programming this week: the 41st annual Messiah Singalong, on Tuesday, December 12 at the First Presbyterian Church, with Philip McLendon and Jim Mooy in charge of voices and orchestra, respectively. And the proverbial you and I in the extended chorus. The Santa Barbara Master Chorale presents its own seasonal concert at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Montecito on Sunday afternoon, December 10.

---

Opera for the Light of Heart

While there was no specific Christmas season alliance last weekend at Center Stage Theatre, where Opera Santa Barbara presented the utterly charming one-act opera El Gato con Botas, a sense of heart-warming holiday spirit and escapist sensibilities filling the room. Late Spanish/Catalan composer Xavier Montsalvatge’s folkloric escapade, equipped with accessible and engaging music (with Tim Accurso handling instrumental duties at the piano here) is a fantastical romp involving a clever and death-dodging cat (the captivating and nimble Christina Pezzarossi). She maneuvers her scheme involving a sad, love-forlorn miller (Omar Rodriguez), a absent-minded king (Michael Segura) and his princess daughter (Sunwoo Park), with an ogre (Colin Ramsey) and animalistic young dancers (Victoria Vertiz, Liz Retter and Chloe Swoskin) in the mix. All in all, the story unfolded with a sweet fizz of fancy mixed with intelligent musicality, an ideal recipe for a holiday fare-like treat.

Another chamber charmer at Center Stage made possible by the Chrisman Studio Artist Program, El Gato also falls neatly in line with the current Spanish-themed OSB season. What opened with a grand operatic salvo with Carmen took a delightfully holiday breather with El Gato and concludes with the swashbuckling Zorro on April 19 and 21. Opera comes in many shapes, sizes, and dialects.

---

Piano Virtuosos on Parade, Part III

Just as we were learning to breathe again after experiencing the thrill of hearing living classical piano icons Sir Stephen Hough and the remarkable Daniil Trifonov performing on consecutive Santa Barbara nights recently, along came another dazzler. South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho, all of 29 and sounding more mature than his age, brought a fascinating recital to Campbell Hall last Friday, hosted by UCSB Arts & Lectures, again demonstrating the power of the piano recital, in elite and naturally gifted hands.

Much-celebrated and with a growing discography on Deutsche Grammophon, Cho is among the celebrated players of his generation, who brings both a precision-geared mastery of the keyboard and an impressive range of expressive sensitivities to his work. At Campbell Hall, in the concert’s second half, mercurial energies burst forth and simmered in the crowd-pleasing blast of Lizst (the “Années de pèlerinage: Deuxième année: Italie,” also performed by Hough at the Lobero), and Haydn’s Piano Sonata in E minor proved an elegant opening strategy for the evening.

But the real meat and intrigue of the program came with a double-shot of Ravel. The “Menuet sur le nom d’Haydn” made for an organic segue from Haydn to Ravel, sliding without pause into the synesthetic splendor and hypnotic maze of the five-part piece Miroirs. Cho illuminated the sharp contrasts of emotions and densities of the work — including moments of edginess and enigma which can be surprising vis a vis Ravel’s rep as a post-impressionist.

Wait, there’s more: Cho actually returns to the local scene as an orchestral soloist, performing Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A minor with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, with Zubin Mehta as conductor (see story here).

---

Giving Serious Guitar Some Attention

Santa Barbara’s bounty and diversity of classical music offerings is rich enough — especially for a city our size — to make specialty complaints seem almost churlish. Even so, those of us in the tiny but devoted cult of classical guitar fans have been feeling a bit neglected in recent years. The city which has hosted the likes of Andre Segovia, Christopher Parkening, the Assad Brothers, Paul Galbraith (in the intimate setting of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art), the LA Guitar Quartet, and other classical guitar legends has become guitar-lean in recent years.

All of which is to report that it was a great pleasure to hear noted and progressive-minded classical guitarist Eliot Fisk appearing with the Santa Barbara City College Symphony on Sunday evening. The Fisk connection comes through Valerie Malvinni, a violist, teacher, and the Symphony’s interim conductor while James Mooy is on sabbatical. Malvinni’s husband and son are also classical guitarists.

A Segovia protégé, Fisk stands apart in the classical guitar realm as being invested in expanding the naturally slender ranks of classical guitar repertoire, including new guitar music by Italian modernist Luciano Berio, along with transcriptions of music by Paganini and many other non-guitar-based composers.

As an added attraction in Santa Barbara, Fisk was on hand to perform the actual U.S. premiere of Mexico City–born and Los Angeles–based composer Giovanni Piacentini’s new Guitar Concerto. Celebrating Latin American musical culture and civil rights issues, the score is an ear-pleasing joyride, easy on the ears but musically substantial, and a soloist workout handily by Fisk. Piacentini, also a guitarist, keenly understands the challenge of sculpting a guitar concerto as more of a dialogue than sonic thicket, balancing out the dynamic contrasts of the guitar and an orchestra. The concerto is a winsome thing, deserving of a spot in the guitar canon.