ON the Beat | Hands-On Musical Weekenders

Chineke! Orchestra presented by CAMA | Photo: David Bazemore

Sugaray Rayford at Carrillo Recreation Center April 2025 | Photo: Jeffrey Sipress

The big news in Santa Barbara over the weekend was its stunning public cast of thousands showing up to the Hands Off! protest, triggered by the evil doings of the White House/nuthouse, in tandem with record-breaking protests around the afflicted country. Also landing on this big weekend in our little city, up Isla Vista way, the massive rallying cause was to promote hedonism and spring fever, in Deltopia mode.

Meanwhile, music lovers got a hefty dose of hands-on reasons to believe — in music, at least. Our town’s live music menu included the British Chineke! Orchestra on Thursday, an especially bold and memorable Stravinsky/Bartok-fortified Camerata Pacifica program on Friday, and a triple threat temptation on Saturday night. Saturday’s fare found New Orleans–ian saxophonist Derek Douget returning to the Lobero, Yo-Yo Ma making a delectable music-word-humanist salad at the Arlington, and the 48th birthday show for the Santa Barbara Blues Society, featuring Texas-bred R&B charisma-channeler Sugaray Rayford.

It added up to an embarrassment of electric riches around the local stages, a happy problem. Personally, I was one of the brave or music-obsessed citizens who made the trek to catch the fiery second set by Rayford’s horn-adorned band, coming over from Yo-Yo’s Arlington show. Ma’s evening involved inspired blasts of Bach Cello Suites, inspiring commentary on a human condition much less scarifying than what’s drooling out of Washington at the moment, and a collective reading of “Goodnight Moon” to close. But that’s another story.

Savory and Auspicious Pairings

Piano duo and spouses Soyeon Kate Lee and Ran Dank with percussionists and spouses W. Lee Vinson and Ji Hye Jung | Photo: Courtesy Camerata Pacifica

We can always count on the formidable chamber music enterprise Camerata Pacifica (CamPac) to be a source of musical comfort and surprise, with musicianship of a high order and programming subject to both change and tradition-soaking. But something extra special dropped into last week’s Hahn Hall CamPac show, themed around the concept of musical pairings, in life and music, represented by piano duo Ran Dank and Soyeon Kate Lee and percussionists Ji Hye Jung and W. Lee Vinson.

Piano duo and spouses Soyeon Kate Lee and Ran Dank | Photo: Courtesy Camerata Pacifica

On another pairing front, the evening also dared to treat the crowd — a full house — to two of the great musical opuses of the 20th century, the piano four hands version of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, and Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. Short piano music of Bach (arranged by György Kurtág) and Poulenc filled out the program, but the real meat of the matter was the Stravinsky/Bartók double-header, with two still mind-bending pieces deftly blending tough and tender rhythmic and melodic energy forces.

Rite of Spring is best known for its vibrant and sometimes raucous (and even proto-rock ‘n’ roll) orchestral manifestation, and yet the piano four hands version was published first, in 1913, and has its own special internally textural, percussively propulsive and magical character. Dank and Lee brought a potent intensity and lyricism to suit, and — at the risk of buying into a romantic idea — their sometimes limb-crossing maneuvers suggested a special conjoining of partnering musical focus.

The partnering impulse upped its ante when the commanding percussionist couple Jung and Vinson joined the stage for the Bartók piece. In the span of three varied movements, Bartók’s 1937-vintage work weaves its distinctive spell, and draws a logical throughline between percussion and piano, an instrument with percussive, “hammering” nature in its DNA. Bartók’s profound musical narrative moves through the restless, dissonant quality of the opening movement, the slow march building to dizzying intensity in the second, and the affirmative — even cheerful melodic gleam of the finale.

Hahn Hall became an early modernist temple for a night, beautifully realized by what could be called musical high priests, were it not for their connubial linkages.

To-Doings:

The Avett Brothers open the Santa Barbara Bowl season on Friday, April 11. | Photo: Courtesy

Just in time for Easter, enter Handel’s immortal Messiah oratorio, done up right by a group which knows from whence it sings, the Santa Barbara Choral Society (SBCS). Although traditionally programmed around Christmas, the piece itself was written with Easter in mind and premiered just after Easter in 1742. The SBCS, under JoAnne Wasserman’s skilled direction for many years now, has served up small plate portions of the piece as an anchor in its annual yuletide-timed Hallelujah Project shows at the Lobero.

At the Trinity Lutheran Church this Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, April 12 and 13, Wasserman leads her charges into Part I and portions of Part II and III of Handel’s epic masterpiece, but with an important twist: It will be a bi-lingual performance, bringing Spanish into the sanctuary. El Mesias/Messiah is the title of a concert, featuring segments of a new libretto by Mario Montenegro, which premiered in San Diego in 2020.

Bringing Spanish texts into the liturgical music context locally, especially in a region where Spanish is so widely spoken, is a welcome addition to the choral agenda. In November, the Santa Barbara Master Chorale’s concert at the First Presbyterian Church took a similar route by presenting the tango-fied sound of Martín Palmeri’s “Misa a Buenos Aires (Misatango)” and Ariel Ramírez’s folk-ish mass “Misa Criolla.”

Forgive the pun, but a significant contemporary classical music moment arrives when Owls land at Hahn Hall on Friday, April 11. The inventive and all-star “inverse” string quartet, with members of yMusic, the Kronos Quartet, and beyond, will be making its Santa Barbara debut hosted by UCSB Arts & Lectures (See story here). Incidentally, call them a strictly classical outfit at your own peril: Their strong new album Rare Birds opens with a fascinating extended arrangement of the Ben E. King classic “Stand by Me,” here dubbed “When the Night.”

Anyone seeking a good excuse to bask in the good graces of hot salsa and Latin Jazz while swerving into the musical dynasty of the Escovedo family (Pete, his daughter Sheila E., younger brother Alejandro Escovedo, and more) needs to put SOhO on its danceable destination map this Saturday, April 12. The legendary percussionist and bandleader Pete Escovedo, formerly of Santana, his own pioneering genre-blending Aztec band, and much more, brings his Orchestra to town for a rare showing hereabouts. Expect music to stir the brain, heart, and dancing feet. (See story here).

Other items of interest dept.: The Avett Brothers does duty as the official kickoff concert of this year’s enticing and suitably diverse season at the Santa Barbara Bowl (see story here), the artist known as The White Buffalo brings his baritone-powered new folk to the Lobero on Friday, and the spring Tales from the Tavern series closes with a “Slideshow and storytelling” evening in Santa Ynez’ Maverick Saloon, with famed boomer rock culture photographer Henry Diltz.

This more or less just in: The spring Tales series has expanded by one special added show, with Earl Minnis bringing the Willie Nile Band to the Maverick on Wednesday, May 21. We reckon that makes it a welcome-to-summer show.