ON the Beat | Seasons’ Closing Notes, Symphony and Chamber-sized

Mads Tolling and Sam Reider in Solvang | Photo: Josef Woodard

Concert seasons come, seasons go, and it’s time for the latter phase. This weekend, we see the closing of strong 2025-26 seasons from two of Santa Barbara’s prominent classical music purveyors, the Santa Barbara Symphony (SBS), on the orchestral front, and Camerata Pacifica, the venerable chamber music haven in S.B. and SoCal, more generally.

Following last month’s dive into American music, the SBS rounds out its season with a bigger and more focused dive into Mahler, and his epic Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection,” as a grand finale, at The Granada Theatre on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. The performance features guest soprano Johanna Will and mezzo-soprano Felici Gavilanes, and a return from the still-young Santa Barbara Symphony Chorus, last heard with the band on Mozart’s Requiem, last November.

Friday night at Hahn Hall, Camerata Pacifica wraps up its season with another installment of its ambitious plan to present the complete Beethoven piano sonatas by the superb, Ludwig-sensitive pianist Gilles Vonsattel. This time, he dips into the early sonatas, with No. 2 on a program also including a quartet percussionists (Ji Hye Jung, Svet Stoyanov, and Jason Treuting) performing the California premiere of a novel piano trio/percussion arrangement of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 15. The percussionists will also do up Kenji Bunch’s Transcontinental for Violin and Percussion Quartet and Thierry De Mey’s Musique de Table.

In this final CamPac encounter of the season, old meets new, meets a new perspective on the old.

Next up on the region’s classical calendar, summer brings its own expected high points, starting with the Ojai Music Festival, June 11-14 (this year directed by the heroic composer-conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen) and continuing with the dense roster of enticements via the Music Academy of the West program through early August. One party ends, another begins.

Mads Tolling and Sam Reider in Solvang | Photo: Josef Woodard

Danish Springing, Jazz Corner

This spring’s cultural landscape in the area has been marked, among other things, by dazzling Danish music highlights. As such, Denmark has made a memorable mark on us in the 805, flying in the face of Trump’s bizarre bellicosity towards that small but mighty nation. But never mind the politics: Danish-born and -colored music won the day and our hearts, starting with the sublime Granada Theatre meeting of the Danish String Quartet — a prime force in the classical world at large — and the Danish National Girls’ Choir, with a moving David Lang premiere as centerpiece.

Over the weekend, the ever-impressive jazz violinist Mads Tolling, born in Copenhagen and based in Berkeley for many years, returned to serenade Solvang — the “Danish capital of America”— with not one but two performances. On Friday, he and his duet partner Sam Reider, an ace at the accordion and piano, joined him to supply VIP reception music at the big Solvang Theaterfest benefit featuring pop star P!nk. Come Saturday night, the Tolling/Reider pair gave a more focused concert in the aptly Danish atmosphere of the Elverhøj Museum.

The gifted duo, stellar both individually and as an empathetic pairing, laid out a nicely balanced musical menu. We heard originals, arrangements of Danish and Swedish folk songs, music from Latin America (including a gorgeous take on the bittersweet Astor Piazzolla classic “Oblivion”), a “hambo” in 5/4 by late, great Danish jazz violinist Svend Asmussen, and other treats.

After opening with the Tolling original “Coastal Explorations,” inspired by his love of the NorCal destination spot known as Sea Ranch, Reider switched from his digital facsimile of piano (a very good one, thank you, Korg) to accordion, which Tolling rightfully described as “the ultimate instrument. It’s very big in Scandinavia.” And it was very big in Solvang last weekend. At least to some of us accordion-inclined fans.

It would be great to hear Tolling, whose résumé includes a Grammy-winning stint with the Turtle Island String Quartet and work with Stanley Clarke and Bob Weir, in the 805 more often.

Choral Reverence, Squared

The traditional and expected pleasure of hearing the inspired a cappella group Quire of Voyces in the ambient embrace of St. Anthony’s Chapel gained an extra measure of profundity last weekend. Rather than offering up the customary variety of choral works on a program, intrepid founder-director Nathan Kreitzer chose as a single subject Rachmaninoff’s glorious All-Night Vigil, Opus 37.

Written in 1915, based on the Russian all-night vespers ceremony, this is Rachmaninoff’s crowning achievement, according to some of us, whatever else the sales or radio charts, and Shine fans, say.

Each of the 15 movements assumes a different musical character and substance, channeling ancient chants through modern airs in the score, building towards the longest section — the Great Doxology — followed by three shorter parts in a denouement-like structure.

I made it on Mother’s Day, as a full sanctuary of rapt listeners packed in to take in the lucid collective sound summoned up by Kreitzer and his talented charges, a sound at once rich and ethereal, enhanced by the chapel’s reverberant acoustics.

No, this was not an all-night affair, but it made for a solid hour of choral musical power on spring afternoons. It was a transporting experience, in a magical space tucked up off Garden Street.

Fight or flighty

Flight of the Conchords, Santa Barbara Bowl, May 7, 2026 | Photo: Carl Perry

“Hello Barbara! I mean Santa Barbara.”

So began last week’s hip and hilarious Santa Barbara Bowl concert by Flight of the Conchords, which turned out to be an evening of cheeky diversions with more Santa Barbara references than any I can remember from Bowl shows over the decades. At some point, they rechristened us with a new moniker, “Santa Brabra.”

I confess to being a Joey-come-lately when it comes to knowing and loving this act/group — about 20 years late, following the cult-favorite HBO series that launched them on the global stage. For a more learned, been-there account, see Tyler Hayden’s confessional review soon.

Flight of the Conchords, the New Zealand–based would-be-and-actually-are pop star duo, made us aware that this appearance was their first big show in eight years, marking the launch of a new reunion tour. The crowd showed up in droves, and I was easily outsmarted by the high level of fandom all around me. But I was instantly sold on their songbook and their brand of giddy, witty, spontaneous improv spirit.

One local source of jocular bandying was our much-ado’ed funk zone, where Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement had been visiting earlier in the day, and noting the overpriced items in the area. McKenzie wondered, “Are there other zones in Santa Barbara?” Clement added, “Yes, a new wave zone, house music zone? How cool.” On more local-national turf, Clement also noted, “We were a bit worried that ICE would take us offstage. It was sunny today, and I tan easily.”

Suffice to say, many rim shots were struck and tangy pop parody points earned at the Bowl this night, here in Santa Barabra.

TO-DOINGS:

Something good is always cooking at SOhO — music and food-wise. The upcoming week is a strong one for local artists who have made a broader impact worldwide. Saturday night brings the alt-rock-country band U.S. Elevator, led by singer-songwriter Johnny Irion (also in an ongoing musical partnership with Sarah Lee Guthrie), on a bill also including former Santa Barbaran Rey Villalobos’ moody-good band Coral Sea.

Then,for a special two-night stint on Wednesday and Thursday, a proud gift to the world from his Goletan suburban roots, Glen (Toad the Wet Sprocket, Glen Phillips) Phillips joins his old pals Sarah and Sean Watkins for a night of individual and conjoined sing-songing of a high order.