ON the Beat | As the Worldly Musician Turns and Twists

805-based Gilles Apap, a World-Renowned Violinist/Fiddler with Deep Local Roots, Brings a Notably Diverse Program to the Lobero Theatre

Gilles Apap | Photo: Courtesy

Gotta’ Love that Gilles Dept.

Of course, we’re talking about the nimble, inimitable, and iconoclastic violin/fiddle virtuoso Gilles Apap, one of the finest globe-trotting yet locally based musicians around this neck of the woods. The French-born violinist, now based in Arroyo Grande, lived in Santa Barbara for years, and even served as concertmaster of the Santa Barbara Symphony (SBS) — and occasionally as a soloist, who would veer from the old masters to his own internal musical master, which led him into bolts of bluegrass, Django-esque jazz and other non-classical zones.

For many years, he has performed around the world, to Europe and beyond (a fascination with Indian music has also led him to studying Carnatic music, which he stirs into his eclectic musical home brew of styles. When Apap shows up at the Lobero Theatre on Saturday, as part of the CAMA “Masterseries,” he will bring along the full measure of his musical cabinet of curiosities, alongside some requisite “serious” musical matters.

In the first half of the program, Apap will show the seriousness of his musicality on the violinistic turf of Fritz Kreisler and Paganini, also touching on Fauré, Romanian master Georges Enescu, and everybody’s favorite “Nuevo Tango” composer Astor Piazzolla. Come post-intermission, the gloves of seriousness come off, and he calls on friends and ensembles he loves — the old-timey heroes Gap Tooth Mountain Ramblers, the Transylvanian Mountain Boys, the Phil Salazar Bluegrass Band, and a special duet with the Chinese erhu player Xiaoli Cioffi, for a taste of traditional Chinese and Tibetan folk music.

As Apap explained to me in an interview, “I’m a classical musician. That’s what I do. But these little tunes are treats for myself that I bring on the road, because with the intensity of playing classical music in these classical surroundings, every time I play a tune, I think of my good buddies. So that’s why I play the music that I do, and why I share it with people. All this crossover stuff that you hear commercially is just something else. I don’t understand why people always talk about that.”

As for his reputation as an envelope-pusher in the normally staid world of classical music presentation and performance, he insisted that “being a rebel was part of the process, just to force me to do something. I heard that a lot, about my being provocative. It’s the last thing in my mind to be provocative. It’s not that.

“But I had to do it, in order to do something like the Mozart cadenza. I had to just go onstage and put it out, and push everything that I could. In this way, I embarrassed myself a little bit. I’ve done it many times now. I’m not ashamed of fucking it up and just taking a bad solo, because I’ve been through so many of these embarrassing situations. You go home and you figure it out. It’s very easy to be in a controlled world.

“Being provocative was part of me just pushing it. I had to go through it. But this was never my intention.”

Apap cheekily dubs Saturday’s concert “For Old Times Sake,” but even as a sixty-something, he remains a model of new musical thinking, living up to the claim by a mentor and hero Yehudi Menuhin that Apap is “a 21st century musician.”

On and Off the Radio

One of my favorite weekly treats in local radioland comes as a welcome capper to the work week, when the programming partners/artists known as Hattie Belle and the Candy Mountain Rambler cook up their special stew of retro, outro, outer spatial, and rootsy-soulful sounds on the Candy Mountain Mixtape show, Fridays at 5 p.,m. on the mighty KCSB-FM (91.9). A feature of the show is the shambling laconica of music under their amiable between-song rambles — some lazy fiddle, accordion chords, guitar riffs, and other instruments — mixed in with creaking studio chairs, suggesting there’s a relaxed party goin’ on in the studio.

Not surprisingly, Hattie and the Candy Mountain Rambler are also musicians with a fine and moody wonder of an album just out under the band name Farewell Stranger, A Storm of Things (check out Bandcamp site here), and are headed to Wylde Works on Saturday at 7 p.m. for a release show. On this lovely, reverb-swaddled song set, the leaders wrap their unforced, loose-fit voices around the melodies and swim in pools of languid deliciousness, with the third voice being a trumpet (somehow, the effect keeps reminding me of Peer Raben’s mesmerizing scores for Fassbinder films). Indie folk might be a categorical catch-all, but they go wherever the mood leads them, into the aptly named shoegazer “Waiting for the Train,” segueing into the rolling train groove of “O How You” and closing with the slow-mo waltz/anthem “Now That Our Dreams are All Falling Apart.”

This music won’t get you up and dancing, in the strict sense, but it gets you slow dancing in your head and heart. That’s entertainment, Candy Mountain style.

Jeff Bridges Sightings

Jeff Bridges, local hero on many levels and ever a major dude, is making a couple of public appearances in the next month or so. On April 19, Bridges hits The Granada Theatre for a screening and Q&A about the Coen Brothers masterpiece of epic dudeness, The Big Lebowski Screening: An Evening with The Dude. And on Thursday, March 13, Bridges will actually be on hand at the inviting Lost Chord in Solvang to conduct a pre-show interview with the lovably quirky pop musicians Benji Hughes (check out his album A Love Extreme, and “Freaky Feedback Blues,” from his album Songs in the Key of Animals) and Jon Lindsay. Artists with slightly warped but endearing oddball natures unite.

TO-DOINGS:

Jazz hits the calendar this week in the form of a Marsalis brother with his own particular agenda and mission: Trombonist/bandleader Delfeayo Marsalis brings his Uptown Jazz Orchestra back to the Lobero Theatre on Friday, March 7. Expect to hear an integrated musical menu of New Orleans and jazz big band traditions in one swinging, sashaying, and all-around happy package. (See story here).

The Music Academy of the West–hosted “Mariposa Series,” a juicy foursome of concerts between the Academy’s summer seasons, comes to an auspicious close on Monday at Hahn Hall, when the acclaimed and adventurous yMusic sextet arrives. The highlight of the concert features young composer Gabriella Smith’s brand new 40-minute piece Aquatic Ecology, for instruments and field recordings celebrating the natural world. Smith’s primary interests are new musical ideas, drawing from early music to art pop and assorted classical models, and a passionate concern for the environment. (See story here).

Last week, the veteran singer-songwriter David Wilcox brought his own literate and personalized song stylings to the fabled Tales from the Tavern series, happily nestled in the Maverick Saloon, in the heart of old town Santa Ynez (well, the whole town is old town). Wilcox, with his fanciful guitar tunings and capo trickery, has a kind of chipper Mr.-Rogers-for-full-grown-adults approach to tale-spinning, and a generous satchel of songs going back to his 1987 debut, up through 2003’s My Good Friends. Songs that stuck: “Rusty Old American Dream,” a poignant song about his wife’s Parkinson’s, “Perfect Storm” (about the storm in his hometown of Asheville), and “The View from the Edge.”

Next up at Tales, Michael on Fire, on Wednesday, March 12.

Boasting a history going back to 1969, the Santa Barbara Music Club always has something intriguing to offer the classical music-loving community, and free of charge. At the same time, the organization showcases the wealth of musical talent based in the area. This Saturday afternoon at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church (a church with the best mountain view through its stained-glass windows), the Club presents Awakenings: Celebrating the Voices of Women in Music. Said women are involved in performance (Leslie Hogan, Virginia Kron, Nicole McKenzie, and Erin Bonski) and composition (Grażyna Bacewicz, Lili Boulanger, Cécile Chaminade, Hogan, and Ruth Crawford). It promises to be another rich and refreshing club meeting, for all comers.