ON the Beat | Academy Sounds Ahoy

Geneva Lewis and Conor Hanick perform at the Ojai Music Festival on June 12 | Photo: Timothy Teague

It’s official: The dense classical music pageantry that is the Music Academy of the West (MAW) summer season is off and running. Starting tomorrow night with the Grammy-winning crossover sensation Arkai, and continuing with noted pianist-conductor Jeffrey Kahane on Saturday, MAW’s annual thicket of live, serious music options will come at us in a fast-and-furious fashion, in the best way.

Summer in Santa Barbara, for music lovers, is by now unthinkable without MAW, on the brink of its 80th birthday next year. (See story here.)

Speaking of 80th birthdays, in a sense, the MAW season was supplied a handy, accidental segue by Ojai Music Festival (OMF), which celebrated its 80th year last weekend in grand style. One of the clear stars of the festival, powerfully designed by music director Esa-Pekka Salonen, was pianist Conor Hanick, a longtime faculty member at the Music Academy, who is assuming a deeper role there in program design going forward.

Hanzhi Wang performs at the Ojai Music Festival on June 12 | Photo: Timothy Teague

In Ojai, Hanick’s multiple appearances — donning many cool shirts along the way — included the world premiere of John Adams’s selections from Visions Fugitives, the first performance of Salonen’s complete set of six piano preludes, and several other appearances throughout the festival.

In one of the MAW season highlights, Hanick will take the soloist spotlight in the piano concerto known as No Such Spring, by Samuel Adams, son of John, on August 1 (link).

Jay Campbell, Mert Yalniz, and Colburn Orchestra at the Ojai Music Festival on June 12 | Photo: Timothy Teague

As for this weekend’s fare, Arkai (being the young, gifted hipsters, violinist Jonathan Miron, and cellist Philip Sheegog, with electronics in the wings) will tap into covers and originals, including items from their album Brightside. Kahane, respected pianist and longtime maestro of the L.A. Chamber Orchestra, cooks up an evening of music, TBA, with “friends and colleagues.”

No doubt, they are more than up to snuff.

Watch for unfolding Music Academy updates in this space and elsewhere in the Independent, and wherever serious music happenings in the 805 are buzzed about.

Contemporary Music, Lagoon-adjacent

UCSB Ensemble for Contemporary Music on June 5 | Photo: Josef Woodard

Hearing last weekend’s bounty of contemporary and modern music in Ojai at least partially satisfied the hunger for new music in our region, a zone not generally known for pushing the classical music envelope. One local exception in the margins is UCSB’s Ensemble for Contemporary Music (ECM), which dates back to its founding by composer/professor William Kraft in the early ‘90s.

A few times each academic year, ECM concerts at Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall pop onto the calendar and offer teasing visits to the realm of new music, performed by — and occasionally composed by — music students in a given quarter. Currently directed by violist Jonathan Moerschel (part of the Calder Quartet), ECM did its duty and fought the good fight this year with two concerts this spring.

A few random notes:

The March 4 concert was framed by Caroline Shaw’s Boris Kerner, for cello and flower pots (as percussion), and capped off by a rollicking octet piece, Thomas Kotcheff’s Bottled at the Source, creatively channeling and deconstructing the pop song “A Thousand Miles,” by Vanessa Carlton. Other highlights included Daníel Bjarnason’s Stillshot, for string quartet, and Anuj Bhutani’s alternately furtive and meditative Rustling.

On the June 2 program, a tasty variety pack shifted from Joanna Bailie’s Berlin street field recording–based Hildegardstraße/Bundesalle to João Pedro Oliveira’s expressionistic viola piece Fifth String II (with the impressive young violist Christian Dos Santos) and the “determined chaos” of Quenton Blache’s afloat, for a piano trio format. Closing out the concert and season on a local note, student composer Yeonsuk Jung set a bustling post-minimalist groove machine in motion with his Race to Nowhere, for a nonet of ECM-ers happily feeding the friendly musical fire.

The verdict: ECM has been in good exploratory hands, circa the 2026 aggregate.

Father’s Day Weekend Festivalia

GA-20 with Charlie Musselwhite | Credit: Courtesy

For years, going on decades, Father’s Day weekend for Santa Barbaran fans of Americana, roots music, and so-called world music meant heading up to the rustic riverfront compound of the Live Oak Camp. On this Lake Cachuma–adjacent property, the Live Oak Festival brought its warm musical bath over the weekend, featuring veritable celebrities in those genres, and for a good cause — raising funds for the public radio beacon that is KCBX.

The Brothers Comatose | Credit: Courtesy

For various logistical reasons, including the property’s use as a firefighters’ base camp, a move was necessary. For the last few years, the festival has decamped to a northern outpost — El Chorro Regional Park in San Luis Obispo, the station’s home base. So now, the Live Oak Festival becomes one of those regional events of the “close escape” kind. The musical goods promised at this weekend’s 37th annual affair certainly dangle the temptation carrot. On the list of musical acts are GA-20 with Charlie Musselwhite, Las Cafeteras, Neal Francis, The Brothers Comatose, and more.

TO-DOINGS:

Major jazz show alert: Tonight, June 18, marks a welcome return from the major and history-conscious tenor saxophonist Branford Marsalis and his crack quartet in the welcoming venue of the Lobero Theatre. On the subject of jazz history and its continuing imprint on living jazz, this Marsalis appears in the wake of his latest album project Belonging, a tribute to Keith Jarrett’s classic album (hear here).

In other Marsalis-related news, Branford’s high-flying and well-dressed brother Wynton is headed back to town twice — with his septet at the Lobero on July 16 (link) and, just announced last week, bringing back his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra to The Granada Theatre on February 24 link.

For a solid hit of old school soul, the O’Jays are headed to the Chumash Casino on Friday, June 19. The OG “Philly Soul” band, formed in 1958, has a hit list that includes “Love Train,” “Give the People What They Want,” and “Backstabbers,” and is still at it, with founding members Eddie Levert and Walter Williams. All aboard for the “Love Train!” (Sorry, couldn’t help it).