ON the Beat | Enlightened Musical Garden Party

Lotusland’s historic Theatre Garden | Credit: Courtesy

Lotusland.

For anyone who has experienced the magic and horticultural majesty of Madame Ganna Walska’s Montecitan wonderland and world of its own, the very name conjures warm feelings and desire for many returns. My own deep connection to the place began with unsanctioned and nefarious self-guided late-night tours with high school pals, hopping over the wall and having a walkabout on the premises. (I believe some hoped-for statute-of-limitations safeguards me from prosecution at this point, roughly a half century later).

Much morerecent and much more legal visits included a memorable encounter last June, with music and meditation attached, at one of the periodic “Wellbeing Wednesday” programs. The morning diversion featured musician and scholar Fabio Rambelli performing on the ancient Japanese gagaku free-reed instrument, the shō, in the Japanese Garden pagoda, overlooking the “Reflection Pond” enclave. The sum effect was transporting, on musical, atmospheric, and on some deeper cognitive level.

The musical compass shifts westward when Lotusland presents its first official concert in the audience-designated Theatre Garden in over a decade on Thursday, May 7, featuring noted New York–based classical pianist Katya Grineva. “Music in Paradise: a Piano Concerto” brings her and a grand piano al fresco to frolic with the mischievous garden gnomes who live there.

Russian-born but based in New York for most of her adult life, Grineva made her Carnegie Hall debut in 1994 and has since graced that hallowed hall some 20 times.

For those unable to come to her in a live concert setting, she has also embraced the streaming model, bringing her concerts into your proverbial living room with weekly Zoom concerts on her website, http://www.katyagrineva.com.

But her upcoming Montecito live event counts as something special and site-specific. Advance word from the Lotusland folks is that she will perform a recital program “designed to harmonize with the surrounding landscape, creating a unique sensory experience where music and nature meet.” If my experience hearing Rambelli’s shō with a view of the Reflection Pond is any indication, the Theatre Garden concert moment will be an enlightened meeting of music and manicured nature.

Big Week in the Little City

For music fans of all shapes, sizes, and inclinations, some weeks just burst forth with too much of a good thing, or four. This is one of those weeks, the week when we get a quadruple dose of music nights worth savoring, with Elmer, Kronos, Pat, and James. That would be: Elmer Gantry, Opera Santa Barbara’s season-closing nod to the cause of contemporary American opera (see story here); the Kronos Quartet, giving the West Coast premiere of the project known as Three Bones, at Campbell Hall on Saturday (story here), friendly neighborhood jazz guitar icon Pat Metheny (story here) at the Lobero on Tuesday, and James Taylor, at the Santa Barbara Bowl on Wednesday.

One could strain to make connections between these disparate artists of note, but the main takeaway is that each has its own personal stories and styles to tell. Here’s one direct link: Metheny, long an admirer of Taylor’s lyrical musical patois, showed his love in the form of a sweet original tune called “James” (hear here). Maybe he’ll bestow the Lobero crowd with the tune on Tuesday? Don’t quote us, but it’s always a possibility.

TO-DOINGS:

In a year, which — so far, knock on wood — has given us a ripe harvest of known jazz artists steering their tours through our town, one of the shows deserving our love and attention from the talent-deserving-wider-recognition corner lands at Hahn Hall tonight, April 30. UCSB Arts & Lectures is hosting the alluringly fine Mexican-born, N.Y.C.-based jazz singer known as Lucía (story here).As heard on her instantly appealing, eponymous debut album (hear here), Lucía is in possession of a subtle and sultry voice and a fluid way of putting it to poetic use.

Tonight’s Hahn Hall show is a must-see for fans of the jazz singing art.

Glen the Ripe Songman

The spectacular yet ever down-to-earth institution known as Tales from the Tavern continues its spring season with a local/global hero, Glenn Phillips. Phillips, the spearhead figure in Santa Barbara success story Toad the Wet Sprocket and a formidable solo artist in his own right, takes the stage of the Maverick Saloon in Santa Ynez on Wednesday, May 6. He shares the stage with an old ally in the good kind of musical crime, Garrison Starr. To wrap things up tidily, the series closes with Willie Nile on May 20.