ON the Beat | Spring-Loaded Blues Night Out, Plus Jazz and Chamber News

Sugaray Rayford at Cabrillo Rec. Center | Photo: Ted Rhodes

It’s been a minute, in musical parlance, since the powerhouse blues/R&B singer Sugaray Rayford graced a Santa Barbara stage. It’s been 11 years, to be exact, since he and his large, horns-fortified band successfully riled up the sold-out house at the Cabrillo Recreation Center in celebration of Santa Barbara Blues Society’s (SBBS) 37th birthday. Coming full circle, Rayford’s return to the scene of the memorably steamy night, in the room with the spring-loaded dance floor, arrives in sync with SBBS’ 48th (count ‘em) birthday on Saturday, April 5. Birthday cake will be supplied, along with imbibe-able liquids.

Rayford’s 2024 album funky-bluesy Human Decency (listen here), well-stocked with B-3 organ textures and thickening horns alongside the rustling rhythm tracks and his commanding vocals, is his latest of seven albums so far in his discography, going back to 2010’s Blind Alley. Along the way, he has picked up laurels and nominations in the Blues Music Awards, B.B. King Entertainer of the Year, and Soul Blues Artist of the Year award.

Sugaray Rayford at Cabrillo Rec. Center | Photo: Jeffrey Sipress

Rayford, Texas-born and San Diego–raised, is one of the many blues and soul singers who first found their musical religion in the Black church, and he even worked at Nashville’s Church of God in Christ, with the famed gospel artists the Wynans and the Clark Sisters. “At one point, I was really in the gospel world,” Rayford said, “but I got burned out on that at about 18 years old. I joined the Marine Corps.

“I didn’t play music for about 18 or 19 years, until I met my wife. I used to bounce for this rock and roll club in Carlsbad, California. One night, as a joke, the band gave me the mic. I think they were trying to embarrass me or something. I hadn’t sung for a long time, but I grabbed the mic, and I couldn’t remember words, but a melody is a melody. When I handed the mic back, they were like ‘Man, you know how to sing.’

“My wife, who at that time was just my friend, really encouraged me. Like I said on my first album, she believed in me before I believed in myself. She said ‘You know, people are put on this earth for certain things, and I think you’re put here to sing.’”

That’s what God had to do with it.

Paired Up in the Chamber

From left: Ji Hye Jung | Photo: Courtesy; W. Lee Vinson | Photo: Courtesy

Piano duo (and spouses) Ran Dank and Soyeon Kate Lee | Photo: Marie Mazzucco

Camerata Pacifica, the prominent chamber music organization — Santa Barbara–born and now settled into its multi-concert agenda around Southern California — is never short of conceptual thinking in the programming department. After dwelling in and around the worlds of Baroque music so far this year, the April concert model takes a fresh approach, basing its four-work program on musicians who happen to be married — to each other. Seizing the stage will be the married piano duo of Ran Dank and Soyeon Kate Lee, and partnered percussionists Ji Hye Jung and W. Lee Vinson.

In fact, the program kicks off in the land of J.S. Bach, with Three Chorale Preludes arranged by visionary Hungarian (and Bach-obsessive) composer György Kurtág (who, incidentally, often collaborated with his marital partner, Márta, who died in 2019). As the main events of the concert, we’ll hear the dynamic blast of Stravinsky’s Modernist milestone work The Rite of Spring for piano four hands and Bartók’s gripping Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. Poulenc’s Elegie for Two Pianos rounds out a program worthy of attention and a visit to Hahn Hall, on Friday, April 4.

New Orleans Jazz Muse, Back on Canon Perdido

Just a few weeks after Delfeayo Marsalis brought his Crescent City–fied Uptown Jazz Orchestra to the Lobero Theatre, another proudly New Orleans–ian jazz artist again makes the Lobero safe for the N’Awlins spirit, and then some, on Saturday, April 5. Saxist/bandleader Derek Douget has become a familiar face and friendly force at the Lobero in recent years, via the theater’s Brubeck Circle project, mixing educational and workshop situations around town and building up to a culminating Douget concert. Douget always promises a fine, casual and musically hip and erudite time.

To-Doings:

The major classical event on this week’s calendar lands on The Granada Theatre stage tonight, courtesy of CAMA and the unique London-based Chineke! Orchestra’s make-up date in town, after canceling due to COVID five years ago. The ensemble, dedicated to Black and underrepresented classical music artists, brings a juicy program of scores by black composers, alive and otherwise, plus a dose of Haydn (see story here).

In other CAMA news, its next Masterseries event features renowned pianist Yefim Bronfman at the Lobero on Wednesday, April 9, bringing his insights to a down-the-middle program of Mozart, Debussy, and Tchaikovsky.

For the best free “serious music” option in town, head over to the next event on the calendar of the Santa Barbara Music Club on Saturday afternoon, April 5 at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church. This time out, the focus is on “music for woodwinds by twentieth-century composers.”

And then there is Yo-Yo. Ma, that is. The legendary cellist has passed through Santa Barbara so many times by now, under the aegis of UCSB Arts & Lectures, that he seems an honorary citizen … and an artist who routinely sells out. Fast. Ma’s appearance, at the Arlington on Saturday night, goes under the moniker “Reflections in Words and Music,” during which the beneficent virtuoso “performs a special selection of his favorite pieces and shares stories about a life dedicated to music.”

Steely Dan fanatics and casual lovers alert: If you haven’t yet experienced the superb Dan tribute band Dr. Wu, or if you have, sidle up to SOhO on Sunday night to see what all the fuss is about. This is a band which takes its challenging job seriously but with sensory glee, and invites us to slide on down into the renewable wonder that is the jazz-spiced Dan sound.