ON the Beat | A Crunch of Concert Options, Serious Music and Beyond

This is no time to sit at home, crying or giggling in your beer and cozying up to the home entertainment command post. Live music beckons. The next week brings out the densest list of enticing concert options this fall in town, in the directions of symphonic music (Santa Barbara Symphony, Philharmonia Orchestra), new bluegrass (Noam Pikelny), blue-eyed soul (Boz Scaggs), prominent Icelandic pianist Vikingur Ólafssen, and mixed Mexican fare (Lila Downs). And did we mention the opening event in this season’s “Mariposa” concert series presented by the Music Academy of the West, featuring the emerging Prometheus Quartet?
           
The big week kicks off with the Prometheus, at Hahn Hall on Friday, October 17, a respected young Juilliard-spawned foursome and the choice for MAW’s “Emerging Artists String Quartet” pennant. Their program includes Mendelssohn, and Beethoven’s Quartet in B-flat Major, Opus 18 — an inspiration for the contemporary work of the night, Blueprint, from the beloved composer (and former guest artist at MAW) Caroline Shaw.  

This weekend belongs to our Santa Barbara Symphony (SBS), launching its 2025-26 season—the 20th anniversary of maestro Nir Kabaretti’s tenure here — on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon at The Granada Theatre. Wait, they’re not doing it alone: This will also represent the season opening night for the State Street Ballet, which will collaborate with SBS on the turf of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, on a program also boasting Shostakovich’s Festive Overture and Rachmaninoff’s “Men’s Dance”. (See Leslie Dinaberg’s story here.)

           
Things get good and grassy on Saturday night out at Campbell Hall, when the impressive and warm bluegrass banjoist Noam Pikelny hits the same stage where his Punch Brothers sibling Chris Thile has trod in the past. Pikelny is also a critical component in the band Mighty Poplar. He is a Grammy winner, and, in a sorta local connection, Pikelny won the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass in 2010, the first year of that prize. His fluid expertise in both the “real stuff’ and more neo-flavored variations have made him an important figure in the banjo universe. Check out last year’s fine album In the Maze here.

Boz Scaggs, playing at the Arlington as part of the UCSB Arts & Lectures season, might qualify for the semi-dubious honor of membership in the irony-laced “Yacht Rock” scene, given his silken pop-soul hits from the 70s (“Lido Shuffle,” and “Lowdown” — written at Marty Paich’s Santa Ynez Valley house, incidentally). But his legacy runs much deeper than that faddish connection, in a career also including membership in Steve Miller’s late-‘60s band before his meteoric rise under his own name. And as Scaggs, now 81, has shown in his recent Santa Barbara appearances, at the Chumash Casino and the Granada, he now qualifies as a great American exponent in the “blue-eyed soul” domain. He wears his crown humbly, and with an understated vocal presence, lined with an organic sense of R&B fiber and gentle grit.

On Wednesday at Campbell Hall, we shift from the cast of many Londoners to the lone heroism of Icelandic pianist Vikingur Ólafsson, heard last year in a delectable duet with pianist Yuja Wang. Here, he returns to the solo recital format he so masters, with a program of Bach (he won a 2025 Grammy for his “Goldberg Variations” recording) and Schubert, plus one of the great “final” Beethoven piano sonatas, No. 30. Beethoven’s last three-pack of sonatas have been in the news and in the local air this year, after the triple-dose of Beethoven from Jeremy Denk this summer at MAW and an upcoming Beethoven sonata focus from Camerata Pacifica this season. No doubt, Ólafsson will bring his own unique stamp and notions to the score, which he also recently recorded for his label, Deutsche Grammophon.

On Thursday at the Arlington, also an A&L show, finds the return of Lila Downs, the charismatic, multi-lingual and musically border-crossing adventurer. She has played in town several times, the last being a Granada show opened by the masked Chinelos de Santa Bárbara group, celebrating music from Oaxaca. Southern Mexico is one of Downs’ birthright locales (along with Minnesota) and points of musical reference. By now, Downs has carved out a hybrid sound all her own and a history including a discography going back to 1994 and a few Grammy awards on the mantle. Her latest album, from 2023, is the traditional Ranchera — and more — tribute La Sánchez, the authenticity of which exemplifies the special touch making her a ripe choice as guest singer at the 2016 Mariachi Festival at the Santa Barbara Bowl.

In an interview before another Santa Barbara show, Downs said, “I love the different musical traditions of Mexico, and I learn from new forms and styles every time I’m there. Mexico has a wealth of music, genres, languages, instruments, and I’m trying to let more people know about it.”

Early on, she had been aiming to study opera, but her natural cultural curiosity and desire to explore personal creative interests steered her on her current journey. “My life had too much order as a classical musician,” she said. “I needed to lie out on the grass and live life from experience — this need has taken me to the places I have been musically and as a woman.”

All told, the hardy and eclectic-eared live music seeker could feasibly make this a seven-day mobile feast of music worth hearing. See you out there.

To-Doings:

Over at SOhO, Friday’s fare brings out nimble-fingered guitarist-singer Alastair Greene, locally born-and-bred and now a globe-trotting artist well-entrenched in the blues-rock scene. The first of Greene’s albums — some of which were recorded in the 805, in studios and live — was 2001’s A Little Wiser. All these years later, he’s a lot wiser and still sounding and standing strong, as heard on last year’s album Standing Out Loud (listen here).