ON the Beat | Fjord-side Jazz Ventures, Opera on the Local Brain

Jennifer Koh | Photo: Juergen Frank

ON the MAW Beat

In the thick yet compacted summer season which the Music Academy of the West (MAW) brings to our music-hungry town, there comes a time when opera is the main dish/event. That would be this week, as the annual, fully staged opera moment lands at The Granada Theatre on Friday night and Sunday afternoon, and to the tune and theme of a contemporary American opera. Kevin Puts’s one-act Elizabeth Cree has been described in the MAW marketing blurb as “a Victorian gothic thriller,” and there are good prospects, this year, for reaching out beyond the opera devotee crowd in town and pulling in curious parties normally wary of opera’s supposedly elite ways.

Bring the entire family, but beware of some murderous turns of events onstage, in a piece about a serial killer, based on Peter Ackroyd’s book The Trial of Elizabeth Cree. Puts, who has been putting in other appearances while in town and at the Music Academy, can be counted on to deliver music of a contemporary yet accessible nature, as we deduced from his Emily Dickinson–based piece Emily — No Prisoner Be, performed in January at the Granada, featuring Puts’s frequent muse, mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato. (See Independent story on Puts here).

Other points of interest jump out for attention on the MAW calendar for the coming week. Tonight, July 23, at Hahn Hall, catch some juicy chamber musical stuff in the “x2: Trains, Lies and Romance” program link, with music of Academy guest composers Missy Mazzoli, Christopher Cerrone, Steve Reich, and Shostakovich. MAW goes to SBMA (Santa Barbara Museum of Art) at noon on Friday, July 24, for a remote concert downtown, under the apt heading “Beyond Conversation: Dialogues in Music through Art”.

Of special interest is the always welcome return of forward-thinking virtuoso violinist Jennifer Koh, bringing her long-brewing “Bach and Beyond” program to the Lobero Theatre on Saturday, July 25. Bach is on the menu, sure, and the “beyond” part includes Mazzoli and Philip Glass link.

And for a true “bring the family” event (sans serial killers), catch the lovable and teachable “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra” at the Lobero on Saturday morning link.

On the Norwegian Beat

Kurt Schwitteres hut Hjerotya, Norway | Photo: Josef Woodard

Art history geeks, especially those with a penchant for German artists from before the war (the second one), might think of Molde, Norway as a quirky but interesting destination on the map for one particular reason: Kurt Schwitters. The iconic collage/assemblage pioneer and creator of his fantastical, theoretical Merzbau enclosures lived in this idyllic outpost in Western Norway for most of the 1930s. Specifically, he lived and worked in a small, rustic stone hut he called Merz-hytta, which you can visit by taking a ferry to the tiny island of Hjertøya.

There is an eerie fascination attached to a visit here for art buffs who also follow the peregrinations of Nazi-redirected modernism. Since the Merz-hytta restoration in 2010, one can go inside where the artist did his daily business and find a recreation and remnants of his Molde-period at the town’s Romsdal Museum. The proverbial rest of the story is that, although Schwitters was eluding the Third Reich in this remote spot, he was again forced to flee when the Nazis extensively bombed western Norway in 1940, plotting to use the area as its western front of global conquest.

But we digress and bury the lede once again.

After-hours jam session featuring Sasha Berliner, Molde Festival 2026 | Photo: Josef Woodard

The principal interest for this columnist and this column space is a different brand of geekish pilgrimage — jazz festival tourism, wherever that might lead. And the process easily leads to the Molde Jazz Festival, considered the top of the Norwegian festival heap and one of the very oldest such festivals in the world. (This may be the subject of debate. They claim to have now taken over the world’s oldest trophy from the Monterey Jazz Festival because they continued right through the pandemic. Jury’s still out on that one.)

I have eagerly made my way to Molde several times over the past two decades, but not since before COVID, making last week’s visit a nostalgic and post-pandemic blast of an experience. The festival ushers in a handful of select international guests, mixed liberally with Norwegian and generally Nordic fare. Americans this year included notable young up-and-comers like trumpeter Riley Mulherkar and vibist Sasha Berliner, and the ever-dazzling vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant, fresh off her artist-in-residence stint at the North Sea Jazz Festival the prior weekend.

Molde’s own artist-in-residence this year was Esperanza Spalding, who intentionally styles her name in lowercase and defied anybody’s expectations, as usual. To Molde, she conjured up an impromptu project, roping in a group of local musicians and a riff-phonic, free-wheeling set with British vocalist/spoken worder ESKA and French percussionist Mélissa Hie. And that show spilled past midnight, and Spalding then asked us to sacrifice sleep to get up the next morning for a 7 a.m. show in the beautiful and view-endowed Reknesparken Park, a compelling improvised duet with British reed sensation Shabaka Hutching.

Esperanza Spaldig and Shabaka Hutchings at the Molde Festival 2026 | Photo: Josef Woodard

From the Norwegian jazz scene, a surprisingly rich, varied, and distinctively indigenous cultural subculture in the jazz world, the goods included an ear-tantalizing fjord-side progressive free-folk-rock sound by Karl Bjorå, guitarist-composer-ringleader of a rangy sextet. His mix included the sweet, resonant sound of the Norwegian hardanger fiddle, replete with sympathetic strings and elaborate designs (from Tuva Syvertsen and Selma French).

Bjorå could also be found later in the ranks of the wondrous revisionist big band OJKOS, dishing up a savory suite of music by the Oslo/Copenhagen-based reed player-composer Maria Dybbroe, called “Wood Wide Web.”

From the formative years category, the winners of this year’s prestigious (and career-launching) “Jazzintro” program were a kindly, punkish, Avant-rocking wild bunch called Sakte, fallende (slowly falling), which makes up a new program for each gig. They told me they had cooked up this set’s batch only two hours before the downbeat. Well, it wasn’t a strict downbeat, as such…

Cosmic Swing Orchestra at the Molde Festival 2026 | Photo: Josef Woodard

I’m always entranced by the post-modern choral weave and contextual adventurism of the ensemble Trondheim Voices and especially fond of hearing what drummer Paal Nilssen-Love — a legend of the jazz left, globally, who actually hails from Molde — is up to. This time out, he was up to — and fully up for — an empathetic improvised set with veteran German avant-piano hero Alexander von Schlippenbach, now 88 but with creative pistons fully firing. Other Norwegian sounds perked up my ears and spirits, including ambient tubaist Daniel Herskedal (in the reverent and reverberant Domkirke Molde), and the psychedelic, post-Sun Ra-ish band Cosmic Swing Orchestra, kicking up a beautiful ruckus.

These were a few of my favorite things in Molde this year, aside from a pilgrimage to the old Schwitters hangout on Hjertøya. If Trump’s terror march continues much longer, you may find me moving there.

Alexander von Schilppenbach and Paal Nilssen-Love at the Molde Festival 2026 | Photo: Josef Woodard

Marsalis/Lobero Family Update

After I asserted that Wynton Marsalis was “finally” making his way to Santa Barbara’s greatest jazz menu at the Lobero Theatre, David Asbell — the now-retired, emeritus Lobero head who helped put “Jazz at the Lobero” on the map — pointed out that the storied trumpeter-bandleader did actually hit the Lobero stage with his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in the year 2000 (suddenly channeling the old Conan O’Brien bit – “in the year 2000 … in the year 2000” link).

Asbell also pointed out that all four of the musical Marsalis brothers have now played the Lobero, with Branford and Delfeayo as leaders, and drummer Jason as side man with Marcus Roberts. In the years since 2000, Wynton has been making his presence known in town at the Arlington, Granada, and Campbell Hall stages. As I was out of town, I regularly regrettably missed what I’ve heard was a fabulous Wynton Marsalis Septet outing last week — hoping that Wynton and the Lobero can be an ongoing love affair.

In short, the Lobero is now officially a Marsalis family-friendly establishment.

TO-DOINGS:

For a Sunday evening snort of jazz, head over to SOhO to catch the band known as the M.O.B. Jazz Quintet, featuring Bruce Bigenho (keyboards), Eje Lyn-Jacobs (vocals, percussion), Gunnar Juergens (violin), Sam McKinney (bass) and Shaun Oster (drums). The band reports that it plays “progressive jazz for around the world.”