Jazz Hits Town, in Double Time

And lo, the jazz muse looked down on the land of the 805 and deemed this place in need of more jazz content and concert action. Voilà, Santa Barbara jazz fans — diehards and newbies alike — ended up with two consecutive, engaging jazz shows on Tuesday night. In a relatively jazz-dry season, the world-renowned Ted Nash (in the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and many other settings) brought his stellar N.Y.C. trio, with fine guitarist Steve Cardenas and bassist Ben Allison to the lovably intimate quarters of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s Mary Craig Auditorium.

A half-hour after the Nash set finished, we could walk one block up State Street to catch the intriguing Italian in Santa Barbara, pianist Antonio Artese, onstage at the Granada — literally onstage, akin to the special stage format of the Lobero Theatre’s evening with Derek Douget last month. At this “Centennial on Stage” event, part of the larger celebration of the Granada’s 100th b-day, which culminates in a Centennial Festival Weekend, April 12 to 14, Artese was joined and beautifully abetted by prized locally based musicians Jim Connolly on double bass and Matt Perko on drums.

Between the two events, suddenly, we were uptown, jazz-wise. At least for a night.

The Los Angeles–bred and long N.Y.C.-based Nash has some deep roots with the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, in conjunction with special projects museum administrator Patsy Hicks. In the late ‘00s, Nash brought his group to town to perform his art-inspired project Portrait in Seven Shades, and Nash has returned several times in capacities as educator and performer. 

But the recent appearance by this lean, refined, but also freely swinging trio qualified as something special among Nash visits, in terms of collective and individual playing and setlist curation. The set served as a unique celebration of unfairly “underdog” musicians Herbie Nichols, Jim Hall, Jimmy Giuffre and the recently belated miracle worker Carla Bley. (Oh yes, they also included a splash of the currently in-the-news “overdog” composer Leonard Bernstein, in revamped, syncopated West Side Story style.)

Nash’s trio played on the auditorium’s small stage sans PA and with a projection of Janna Ireland’s elegant black-and-white image of an architectural interior by influential African-American architect Paul R. Williams (1894-1980). Ireland is currently showing her fascinating and multifaceted work upstairs at SBMA, as well as in the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara. Unlike Nash’s other more expressly art-linked musical projects, the visual element here served mostly as an atmospheric aside to a program of music steeped in what Nash described as “mid-century Modernism” — also architect Williams’s milieu and era.

Nash is a fluid and tasteful solo-sculptor, as are the talent-deserving-wider-recognition Cardenas (whose résumé includes stints with Bley and the Charlie Haden/Bley-led Liberation Music Orchestra) and Allison, always supportive and ready for a salvo come solo time. Among the high points of the trio’s nimbly articulated and never overstated or hubristic set were Bley’s lovely ballad “Lawns” — a case study in inspired simplicity — Hall’s “Waltz New” and such quirky-cool Nichols gems as “She Insists” and “Tell the Birds I Said Hello,” also the title of the trio’s Nichols tribute album.

All the pieces were in the right place, the right attitude, and the right venue with this show. An encore performance is in order.

Artese, who studied at UCSB years ago, moved back to Italy, and now mostly lives in Santa Barbara, has performed at SOhO and has released impressive recordings showing evolution in his artistry over the years. He brings classical training to bear in his approach to the piano trio tradition, not to mention a certain lyrical Italian jazz piano sensibility. Hearing his fine work on the Granada stage, I was reminded of catching a few Italian players featured in the lineup at the Umbria Jazz Festival last summer —  including Stefano Bollani (with whom Artese shares a comedic flair), Enrico Pieranunzi, and Dado Moroni.

The set featured handsome Artese originals, including “Voyage,” “My Blonde Girlfriend” (in tribute to his wife), and two as-yet-untitled tunes (I suggested “Winds of Changes” for the nameless finale — but no pressure!). He also varied the turf with a nod to Puccini and a blast of blues in the form of “Straight No Chaser.” For a detour into a mid-set interlude, Santa Barbara’s beloved Brazilian singer-guitarist Téka called on “Look of Love,” and “Summer Samba” (lyrics by Montecitan Norman Gimbel).

Overall, the serendipitous double-header of separate jazz occasions triggered a certain afterglow for those of us yearning to make jazz a more regular part of the city’s otherwise rich music cultural cuisine. More was more.