ON the Beat | Peering into the Local Festival Zone

Esa Pekka-Salonen | Photo: Courtesy

Festivals Among Us

As we lean into the prospects of summer (note this week’s Summer Camp preview issue of the Independent), anticipations of festivals to come begin to foam at the brain. Two of the major, widely respected festivals in the 805 land in June, as they have reliably done for years upon decades. The great contemporary Ojai Music Festival, now up to its 80th edition, takes over the idyllic burg of Ojai — especially Libbey Bowl — from June 11-14. This year’s affair is particularly alluring, with the always welcome return of eminent yet ever-young conductor-composer Esa Pekka-Salonen at the helm as music director,

A week later, over Father’s Day weekend like clockwork, the Live Oak Music Festival offers plenty of enticement to head up to San Luis Obispo’s El Chorro Regional Park for a weekend teeming with an eclectic assortment of sounds — Americana, roots, R&B, jazz, “world music,” and more. The musical mix is a fair reflection of the range of musical styles heard on the wondrous public radio outlet KCBX, which has proudly beamed from San Luis Obispo for 51 years now. Another reason to support the festival: Live Oak is an important fundraiser for the station.

On the dense day-and-night roster this year are Charlie Musselwhite and GA-20, The Brothers Comatose, Neal Francis, and too many others to mention. For most of its 36-year (and counting) run, the festival settled cozily into the Live Oak Camp by Lake Cachuma, which made for a handy adjacency for Santa Barbarans; now, it’s a wee road trip up to S.L.O., but one well worth deliberation.

Consider it a warm-up to summer camp season, for the whole family.

But wait, there is more afoot in festival news. Another starring feature on the San Luis Obispo County cultural front, still in its youth, is the fantabulous jazz club Libretto in Paso Robles (yes, a must-see/hear jazz club in the heart of Paso), specializing in piano jazz — and featuring a prized 9-foot grand Steinway D as the venue’s epicenter. The club has received the anointing touch on DownBeat magazine’s best jazz club list for the past two years (the Lobero Theatre has also been on that list).

From April 24-26, focused, festival-geared attention lands in the basement club in the form of the inaugural Paso Robles Jazz Fest. The list of artists, which includes prominent current piano bright lights such as the strikingly fine Sullivan Fortner, Gerald Clayton (also at the Lobero on May 28 — bumped from its original April 14 date), and Taylor Eigsti, a Libretto regular in good company. If my memory serves, this is the first new jazz festival entity to land in the 805 since the inviting but short-lived Solvang Jazz Festival of yore (2007-2009).

Even closer to home, there are strong rumors and efforts underway to launch the new Carpinteria Jazz Festival, in and around the Alcazar Theatre, in the fall. Watch this space for further news on that front. Festivals, of the jazz or other sort, help give us reason, consolation, and hope in a murky world.

Have Fat-Body Jazz Guitars Will Travel … to Buellton

Central Coast Jazz Guitar Fest 2026 | Photo Josef Woodard

Could our humble ex-urban region become ripe real estate for modest but niche-hugging jazz festivals? Just two weeks ago, the stomping ground of the Buellton Marriott Hotel was taken over by the third annual Central CoastJazz Guitar Fest for the weekend. Founded by Central Coast–based guitarist Rich Severson, the festival is an evolving, expanding magnet for players, teachers, students, and fans of fat-body “archtop” jazz guitar culture, with roots in clean-toned mainstream jazz. Jam sessions, masterclasses, performances of the official and impromptu kind, guitar showcasing, and other activity buzzed about the lower floor of the Marriott, even spilling up into the upstairs lounge area for general public consumption.

I stopped by and wandered over from a loose but steamy meet-up in the jam session room, including Santa Barbaran guitarist Craig Sharmat in flight, and then checked out a class underway by the title “Tri-Tone Explosion,” led by veteran teacher-player Adam Levine. In another corner of the festival spread, a duet performance found Brad Rabuchin and David Becker offering their improvisational ideas on the timeless theme of “All the Things You Are.” Becker then played a solo set, with looping and tastefully deployed effects in the mix — an anomaly in this mostly clean-toned mainstream jazz confabulation.

Brad Rabuchin and David Becker at the Central Coast Jazz Guitar Fest 2026 | Photo Josef Woodard

Another duet performance took place in the larger ballroom that afternoon, with Tim Lerch and Adam Levy (who gained some high-profile public visibility during his years as the go-to guitarist for Norah Jones). They took on “Days of Wine and Roses,” first in a slow and minimal fashion, and then with the opposite approach. Like the law firm of Rabuchin and Becker, Lerch and Levy have recorded an album, available on the merch table, near the boutique showcase of tasty archtop guitars for sale.

Larry Koonse, long one of the West Coast’s greatest jazz guitarists, was in-house, offering up a lesson in which he dealt with “rhythmic dissonance” and the lessons he learned studying the piano work of McCoy Tyner, discovering new “dimensions when you pay with these wide intervals.” The veteran teacher, based at CalArts for years, retired in May and admitted, “It’s very weird for me to talk about music,” although he had valuable ideas to impart. He also had playing on hand, alone and joined by guitarist John Stoie on “Invitation,” on which Koonse broke in to note that “if the note on top is cool, you can do anything beneath.”

Not just anybody can do anything interesting or fresh, of course. That’s where the art of mature and forward-thinking jazz-making steps in.

Jazz guitar nerds alert: Watch out for next year’s fest.

When in Rome or Santa Barbara, go to the Symphony

For the next step in the current season of the Santa Barbara Symphony (SBS), the musical cuisine leans into things Italian. Maestro Nir Kabaretti, currently in his 20th year on the SBS podium, leads a program spanning the centuries, with the winter portion of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons — a send-off to the season just passed — Puccini’s Capriccio Sinfonico (with embryonic versions of pieces later appearing in La Bohème!), Respighi’s The Pines of Rome, and, mostly intriguingly, the U.S. premiere of a new work by Cristian Carrara, The Red Ferrari Accordion Concerto.

Doing the soloist honors is Hanzhi Wang, an ace accordionist we’ve grown fond of hearing in town, recently with violinist Nicola Benedetti and before, mandolinist Avi Avital. She and her great but unjustly marginalized instrument are always welcome in these parts.

TO-DOINGS:

X marks one of his spots, but the legendary punkabilly band that launched John Doe into public orbit was only one of his artistic vehicles. His impressive solo career and persona, weaving through Americana-suitable, singer-songwriter, and other modes, have made him a figure always worth a listen. The 805 gets a ripe and atmospherically seductive opportunity to do so when Doe returns to the Tales from the Tavern homestead, next Wednesday, April 1, in Santa Ynez’s Maverick Saloon. This guy’s got tales to tell and miles traveled.

The Lobero Theatreline-up this week boasts two well-established musical figures from different eras and genre zones. Saturday night belongs to the legendary soul B-3 organist Booker T. Jones, of Booker T. and the MGs (“Green Onions”) fame. We last caught Jones in this room when he appeared with fellow Memphis-ian Charles Lloyd — in their first meeting — at Lloyd’s 80th b-day concert in 2020, when the organist was 74. Time marches on, and Booker T. keeps his musical fires burning.

Monday night brings back Keb’ Mo’, ever the friendly blues-pop-soul purveyor of good vibes.