ON the Beat | After the Deluge, Musical Life and Brasscals Go On

This edition of ON the Beat was originally emailed to subscribers on February 8, 2024. To receive Josef Woodard’s music newsletter in your inbox each Thursday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.

As if to remind us that Water Is Power, Santa Barbara’s concert life has recently been disrupted through watery circumstances. First, The Granada Theatre’s flooding issue sent concerts and other programs packing for alternate venues, including Renée Fleming’s Voices of Nature recital, which moved up State Street to the Arlington Theatre. Fittingly, her audio-visual concept piece addresses the awe and angst surrounding nature in this moment.

And then the rains came with an uncommon force, resulting in the postponement of Saturday’s Roomful of Teeth concert and the cancellation of Sunday’s Mountain Stage performance/broadcast, which had already switched locations from the Granada to the Arlington. What’s a live music addict to do? Except to hunker down at the homestead and take refuge in diversions on screens and home speaker setups (thank you, Sonos).

While tooling about the town a bit on Saturday evening, licking my wounds over having missed the innovative vocal powers of Roomful of Teeth, a certain brassy sound beckoned from the beloved Westside watering hole of the Tully. Could it be? Yes, it could: I was finally hearing the much buzzed-about guerrilla theater brass band known as the Brasscals, which I had read all about courtesy of Nick Welsh’s recent, unabashedly fanboy-ish Independent cover story (read it and weep, here).

The 15-ish-piece band — brass players enmeshed with percussion forces (including washboard) and bass, guitar, and banjo, to boot — stuffed itself resourcefully in the Tully’s back “stage” area, wriggling and grooving as much as the available space allowed. Ample wriggling and grooving could also be found in the packed house, for a gig that turned out to be the band’s second anniversary shindig.

Fans of brass music, of the straight or progressive or punk-edged sort, be alerted: Get thee to the Brasscals’ shows, whether in an official place or at some street happening. This is one of the bands best appreciated on a “being there” basis.

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Opera Now!

Santa Barbara got a teasing sampler-plate meal of opera content recently, courtesy of the Santa Barbara Symphony’s (SBS) opera toast program last month (review here). The real, whole-cloth medium hits the local boards this weekend when Opera Santa Barbara (OSB) presents its first production of the new year, Verdi’s Il trovatore, at the Lobero Theatre on Friday night (Feb. 9) and Sunday afternoon (Feb. 11). In fact, audiences prone to catch performances by both SBS and OSB will note crossover in the vocal talent pool: The Symphony capitalized on the presence of fine singers — soprano Karin Wolverton, mezzo Deborah Nansteel, tenor Harold Meers, and baritone Timothy Mix — in town to rehearse for the Verdi opera, offering a taste of that music in the mix.

An evergreen standard of opera repertory, Il trovatore (“The Troubadour”) is one of Verdi’s best-known and loved operas, a historical drama based on 19th-century Spain and teeming with mysticism, revenge, tales of oppression against the Romani people, and other dramatic themes energizing the story, music, and staging. It’s also a musically challenging opera to take on, yet within the grasp of OSB’s proven gifts, and lives on as a foundation of the romantic Italian opera tradition. We’re all ears, eyes, and other senses.

Re: Festivaling for Fun and Profit, by the Beach

After being derailed and re-examined during the pandemic era, the unique convention known as FestForums returns from next Thursday to Saturday, February 15-17, landing this time at the Mar Monte Hotel compound, a stone’s lob from East Beach. The festival caters to the vast and vibrant culture of festivals of all sorts: film, epicurean, music, and niche points of departure.  

Past tributes have gone out to directors of Vans Warped Tour, Woodstock, and many other significant promoter/director/manager figures, and closing awards events have featured celebrated locals Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins, Jeff Bridges, and Jon Anderson. Harry Shearer and Dennis Quaid are also FF alumni. This year’s long list of panelists and guests includes actress Alicia Silverstone; music video and comedy specials director Marty Callner (interviewed by comedian Dane Cook); Mix Master Mike (Beastie Boys); ATO Records partner Bruce Flohr; and Signe Lopdrup, director of the massive and hip Roskilde festival in Denmark.

FestForum founder and industry insider Laurie Kirby has steered the event into higher visibility within the larger world of festival and event-making. As she stated, “Ever since we started FestForums, it’s been all about the people. They come from all points of the festival industry – music, film, food, and wine festivals. It’s so exciting to see everybody mixing and mingling, and they get to do it all in the gorgeous seaside city of Santa Barbara. Who can beat that?”

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To-Doings:

For jazz aficionados suffering from withdrawal from the slim pickings of the jazz world landings in Santa Barbara, a not-to-miss calendar marker is the tour stop by the Blue Note Quintet, at Campbell Hall tonight, February 8 (see story here). The young all-star group made up of pianist/music director Gerald Clayton, alto saxist Immanuel Wilkins, vibist Joel Ross, drummer Kendrick Scott, and trusty bassist Matt Brewer have hit the road as part of a tribute to the grand old jazz label’s 85th anniversary.
        
One of the inspired young upstarts on the Santa Barbara classical music scene, the Santa Barbara Chamber Players, comes out to play at Hahn Hall this Saturday, February 10. The upcoming program goes British, with Ralph Vaughan Williams’s famed The Lark Ascending, featuring the group’s concertmaster Sara Bashore as violinist soloist, along with Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.

Jazz comes to SOhO with a double shot in the next week: drummer extraordinaire Kevin Winard’s group Who Dat Dere? shows up in the Santa Barbara Jazz Society’s spotlighted Sunday afternoon soiree, and SBCC’s much-heralded jazz big band heads downtown on Monday night, for some no doubt well-tooled Monday big-band madness.