ON the Beat | Beethoven on the Brain, on the Town

Che-Yen Chen, viola | Photo: Courtesy Camerata Pacifica

Looking at this weekend’s musical calendar in town, there’s no question that it belongs to Beethoven. In 2020, the music world widely celebrated the master’s 250th birthday, which turned out to be a case of bad timing considering the pandemic’s live music shut down sanctions. Santa Barbara appears to be making a concerted toast to the German musical Prometheus six years later. And who can complain?

In the center ring is the Santa Barbara Symphony’s grand opening act for the new year, an ambitious Beethoven concerto Marathon, through which The Granada Theatre will be consumed with the sound of all five of the Master’s piano concertos, on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon (see story here).

Over at Hahn Hall on Friday, January 16, Camerata Pacifica continues its completist Beethoven piano cavalcade — more of a slow motion, three-season marathon — with Beethoven sonatas, Opus 90 and 49, as the pillars of the program. The wowing pianist Gilles Vonsattel, set to have performed all 32 Beethoven sonatas over the course of three seasons, is a keynote element in a program also featuring the Germanic “Schu” bothers — Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata and Schumann’s Märchenbilder.

On an honorable housekeeping note, it was just announced last week that the organization’s fearless and dogged founder/director (and flutist) Adrian Spence was feted by Musical America as one of America’s “Top 30 Professionals of the Year: The Movers & Shapers of the Performing Arts” (story here). Kudos to the enterprising and multi-talented Irishman in Santa Barbara.

Beethoven is in the houses here. Bring it on.

AI-Powered Finishing Touches

Musicians, the live, human kind, are naturally suspicious of the powerful and sometimes pernicious AI. News of AI-spawned robotic bands on Spotify and multiple uses of AI in various facets of music making and marketing can foster fear and some amount of loathing for advocates of the musical arts. It’s a different story for Lucas Cantor Santiago, a producer and musician who has worked with pop stars (Lourde) and filmmakers (Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze) and assorted streaming platforms and media companies with Emmy and TEDs talk plaudits to boast about. For a recent trick, he enlisted AI to complete Schubert’s “Unfinished Symphony” and has produced a work titled New Composition #38, composed by the artist known as AI.

Hear him out, on paper and in person, via his new book Unfinished: The Role of the Artist in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, which he’ll be signing and speaking about at Godmother’s on Saturday at 6 p.m.

Art for the Artist, Forest for the Trees

Ariel Pink at SOhO, January 2026 | Photo: Josef Woodard

From an objective “just the facts ma’am” accounting, as well as from subjective consideration, the artist known as Ariel Pink put on a smashing show at SOhO on Saturday night. With his tight, ready-to-wear-and-rock band, Pink — born Ariel Rosenberg — showed the impressive stuff he’s been made of for many years. Said stuff includes elements of lo-fi post-punk can-do, references to progressive pop, ’60s through ’80s genres, clever hooks, and sneakily sophisticated maneuvers. At SOhO, the music duly rocked and punked up the joint in a crisp 75-minute Saturday night special of a package.

And yet … It is now difficult to separate the art from this artist, whose reputation and career was nearly derailed after news of his being part of the January 6th insurrection club. Pink, an acknowledged Trumper, defends himself by claiming he was only an idle spectator in D.C. that day and that, subsequently, his musical life — and ability to make a living and feed his family — has been upended in the throes of cancel culture overreach. His label, Mexican Summer, cut ties with him on January 8th, while other aspects of the already fragile indie music infrastructure shunned him, officially or otherwise.

In a strange way, watching him perform now might be likened to catching a rocker professing to be a Satanist. Maybe there’s a spot for Pink on the now freed-up Trump Kennedy Center calendar. But Satanists need love, too, especially when the power of their work commands attention and pulls us into their expressive world. As Jonathan Richman pointed out, Picasso was an asshole.

Rubber hit the road in a fascinating way at SOhO, where Pink was celebrating his impressive new album With You Every Night — his first in seven years — and tapping into such past hits as “Lipstick” and “White Freckles.” With his voice bathed in delay/reverb and a stage presence made mysterious through lighting schemes, he rarely spoke except to say, twice, “any Jews in the audience!?” before playing the new song “House of the Haunted Hebrews” (he is Jewish and Mexican by lineage).

Perhaps tellingly, one of the catchiest numbers on the new album, as heard at SOhO, is “Everyone’s Wrong,” with the refrain “Times like these I get depressed and I feel so sad / I think that I’m fucking wrong / If I’m wrong, it’s for the best and I feel so sad / Cause everyone’s fucking wrong.” He lays into the repeating, mantra-like, and plainly transgressive hook “everyone’s fucking wrong,” with the SOhO joining in for a campy singalong. That’s entertainment!

Hot, Tasty Licks on the Gypsy/Roma Plan

John Jorgenson Quartet at SOhO, January 2026 | Photo: Josef Woodard

A very different and more innocent vibe hit SOhO a few nights earlier, when the fine and fleet-fingered acoustic guitarist (and bouzouki player) John Jorgenson returned to town, with his fine quartet, and masterful guitarist-pianist Rory Hoffman, in tow. His appearance was the first of the year/season for the Santa Barbara Acoustic organization

Jorgenson’s set ranged from modern, original spins on the post-Django Reinhardt, “Gypsy Jazz” (I still maintain that political correctness demands the genre should be renamed Roma Jazz), and more. In that “more” category was an up-tempo take on “Old Man River,” a moody rendition of Elton John’s “Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word” (with a fetching accordion solo by Hoffman), “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” and the Jorgenson–Peter Frampton penned “Souvenirs De Nos Peres (Memories Of Our Fathers).” The ear-pleasing, controversy-free evening closed with the speedy, friendly rush of his “Mediterranean Blues,” a workout for all on board.

As S.B. Acoustic moves forward, they are moving operations over to the fitting venue of the Unitarian Church, starting with Twanguero (Diego Garcia) on February 15.

TO-DOINGS:

Santa Barbara Blues Society kicks into the new year with an old favorite, Tommy Castro, stopping at the Carrillo Recreation Center on Saturday night, as part of a tour promoting his new album Closer to the Gone, his eighth on the legendary Alligator Records. Castro, 70 and kicking it, boasts an organic mastery of blues guitar and vocal lingo, reliably puts on a strong show, as proven in town before. Dancing shoes allowed at the Rec.

¡Viva el Arte!, the 20-year-old project helmed by UCSB Arts & Lectures, is a true treasure, as it continues to remind us with each of its handful of programs each year. Following the thrilling/soothing show by Gaby Moreno last year, the season continues with this weekend’s four-day residency with a return engagement of Mariachi Reyna de Los Ángeles. The acclaimed all-women mariachi band, formed in 1994 and proudly bucking the male-dominated mariachi world, performs in Isla Vista on Friday, Guadalupe on Saturday, and in the customary climactic concert slot at the Marjorie Luke Theatre on Sunday evening.

Mariachi Reyna De Los Angeles | Photo: Courtesy

Did we mention that all performances are free to the public? See you there.

Over at SOhO on Saturday night, the unique phenom known as Whatever Forever returns to the space, launching a parade of ‘90s music with an ensemble of some 20 musicians, some in the large core band and others on a sittin’ in basis. Organized by Jenna Tico and Sio Tepper, “Whatever Forever Goes 90s Again!” unveils for your listening and dancing pleasure, and with a good cause, benefitting SBResiste, a nonprofit that helps families and communities affected by ICE. (See Independent story here).