ON the Beat | Frivolity in Serious Clothing

Bill Frisell band | Photo: Courtesy

It’s been a busy month in Lake Santa Barbara, and the going is getting extra-busy this weekend. Choices will have to be made for serious music fans of many stripes. An embarrassment of riches, as they say, is before us. For one, two of the most legendary names in jazz on this year’s concert calendar happen to be flying into the 805 zone within the next few days.

Tonight, May 15, the kinder, gentler guitar hero Bill Frisell finally makes it back to the ideally Frisell-friendly venue of the Lobero Theatre, as part of the Good Dog band’s west coast tour (see story here), with old pals Greg Liesz on pedal steel, drummer Rudy Royston, and bassist Tony Scherr. Expect to be bathed in the left-of-rootsy goodness of material from the 1999 album Good Dog, Happy Man (listen here), which extends its appeal from jazz fans, as such, to general warm-spirited music, as such.

Two nights later, on Saturday, May 17, famed trumpeter-composer-bandleader-arts-advocate Wynton Marsalis returns to town, at the Arlington Theatre, in one of his many visitations hosted by UCSB Arts & Lectures (see story here). He was last in town with his septet in a casual jam-style set. This time around, he brings a 13-piece ensemble to play the live score to Daniel Pritzker’s impressive 2010 silent film LOUIS — roughly speaking, a companion piece to Pritzker’s fine Buddy Bolden biopic Bolden, on which passionate jazz historian Marsalis played much of the trumpet and cornet work. Marsalis and co. will also supply a purely musical set to follow the film component.

This week, Santa Barbara definitely qualifies as a “jazz town.”

Fiddler-cum-Violinist Extraordinaire Walks the Classical-Bluegrass Line

One of the clear high points of this spring’s musical menu in town came from a worldly violinist Gilles Apap, who wowed the crowd at his CAMA-sponsored recital at the Lobero in March. He was up to his old “tricks” (very musical tricks) of blending his classical virtuosity with his love of old-timey, Romani, Hot Club jazz, and other musical leanings. No prim fussiness here, just a fount of entertainment.

Expect a similar phenomenon when the acclaimed and vibrant young violinist-fiddler Tessa Lark makes her Santa Barbara debut at Hahn Hall on Tuesday, May 20, with pianist Amy Yang in tow. The show is part of UCSB Arts & Lectures’ Hear & Now series of emerging artists making local debuts. If Apap was one of the pioneers of the organic crossover impulse for virtuosos with a taste for earthier genres, the Kentucky-bred Lark is part of a next generation crop of similar serious and “vernacular” players. Mandolinist Chris Thile — set to play at the Music Academy of the West’s gala concert on Friday, July 11 — also comes to mind.

To get a taste of Lark’s unique and commanding way with both classical and bluegrass manners, proceed directly to her 2023 album Stradgrass Sessions (listen here), an album which juggles and shuffles classical business of Bartók and Ysaÿe with progressive bluegrass tracks and stellar guests who also cross the classical-grass line, double bassist Edgar Meyer, and mandolinist Sierra Hull, with cameos from pianist Jon Batiste. The album opens with her aptly-titled “Jig and Pop,” also on her upcoming Hahn Hall program. The concert will jigger and rejigger expectations of what repertoire goes where, with Bartók, Ysaÿe, Kreisler, and John Corigliano’s Sonata for Violin and Piano.

Even if your concert-going dance card is overstuffed this week, carve out time to bask in the presence of this infectious and unpretentious young wizard.

Carrying that Weight, Nicely and By His Lonesome

Martin Sexton at SOhO, 2025| Photo: Josef Woodard

It’s always a pleasure to catch singer-songwriter-guitarist-one-man-band Martin Sexton live and in multi-tasking action, and SOhO has thankfully hosted this former busker many times, with an ever-expanding contingent of fans in tow and in awe. As he told the SRO house last week, “I like the feeling here, like playing in my living room … except there is applause.” A full house of folks showed up for a very special Sexton-ian evening last week, when he dared to take a brisk walk down the venerable Abbey Road.

It takes some nerve, a bounty of talent and intestinal fortitude to dare perform the entire mythic Beatles swan-song album Abbey Road, a particularly tapestry-like and musically diversified mosaic. But from “Come Together” to the winking 25-second post-ending track “Her Majesty,” Sexton pulled it off with a remarkable moxie, using his proven skill at juggling percussive effects and spidery fingerings on his guitar, a flexible and soulful vocal aplomb, and his whistling-through-the-teeth chops. Another critical factor is his obvious deep love, study and curiosity about one of the greatest pop bands ever made.

Among the many highlights of the set were his tasteful reshaping of the melody to “Something,” laying into the desire-drenched gravitas of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” and lending a light touch to the underrated gem “Sun King,” which served to remind us of the Brian Wilson love tucked into that sleeper.

He returned after a break for a strong, more typical Sexton set, but it was his expertly wrought Abbey Road that made this so much more than another night in Sexton town.

To-Doings:

Classical seasons are wrapping up this month, including that of the go-to chamber music operation Camerata Pacifica (CamPac), whose memorable program last month featured a rapturous, suitably raucous spin around the piano four hands version of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Bartók’s Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion.

The provocative programming gods are with CamPac again this month. On the slate is an enticing mixed salad program from witty great-ish American composer William Bolcom’s Orphée-Sérénade to Chopin’s Andante spianato et Grande polonaise brillante in E Flat Major, Op. 22, and a return visit from Lera Auerbach’s Dreammusik. Commissioned by CamPac back in 2014, the Auerbach piece spotlights long-standing in-house cellist Ani Aznavoorian.

In other season-closing news, much-celebrated classical pianist Garrick Ohlsson brings another bold CAMA season of concerts to a close with a recital in the Masterseries at the Lobero Theatre on Wednesday, May 21. Originally scheduled for a January date, cancelled for health reasons, Ohlsson makes good with an all-Chopin recital next week. A good dose of eloquently realized Chopin, from this winner of the 1970 Chopin Piano Competition and an acknowledged master of that realm, seems like a perfect bookend to the 106th CAMA season.

The Santa Barbara Master Chorale’s final concert of the season goes by the title “Gems of Time,” at the First United Methodist Church on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, May 17 and 18. The program runs a gamut of sources, including music of Handel, Brahms, Duruflé, and Mozart, led by current artistic director/conductor David Lozano Torres.

A special guest on this program is the fine organist Thomas Joyce, who can also be heard on most Sundays as the resident organist of the Trinity Episcopal Church. Trinity’s organ is one of Santa Barbara’s important instruments, as is the First United Methodist organ. And organ geeks (you know who you are) are also advised to check out the biggest in town, at First Presbyterian Church.

As for the swankiest music venue not necessarily designed as a music venue, the mythic Bellosguardo Estate opens its doors to music lovers this Saturday afternoon when it becomes one of the carefully selected sites of a program called In a Landscape: Classical Music in the Wild. Named after John Cage’s piece (listen here), the series founded by and featuring pianist Hunter Noack pursues the concept of bringing music to natural and unexpected sites, including the now public-invited hilltop Xanadu of Bellosguardo.

Don’t come expecting to hear much of Cage’s radically idealistic music, however. A list of possible repertoire includes Erik Satie (a Cage hero), Scriabin, Beethoven, Schubert, and possibly the Sherman Brothers’ Mary Poppins songs. Also on the possible program list is one infamous Cage piece, the “silent” conceptual landmark 4’33. Of course, it’s not silent but subject to innate sonic and atmospheric goings-on in a given performance space. Here, Bellosguardo herself would be center stage.