ON the Beat | Past and Present Hotness

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A full house at last week’s Django Festival All-Stars concert got an earful of what they came for. We got spidery hot licks, unapologetically aping the style of 1930s-era “jazz hot” hero Django Reinhardt, a generous spirit of bonhomie, plus the added attraction of cameos by the accomplished vocalist Veronica Swift. The band, the shining star in the subculture of “gypsy (a k a Romani) jazz,” has become a popular item on the “Jazz in the Lobero” menu for a few years now, popular in part because its feel-good sound appeals to both general music lovers and jazz nerds.

Patriarch of the band, Dorado Schmitt, has passed the leadership torch down to his son Samson, who wasted no time in showing his virtuosity and musicality on his Django-style guitar, opening the first tune with a dazzling but nuanced solo intro. Fellow front liners, ace accordionist Ludovic Beier and violinist Pierre Blanchard, also showed their considerable mettle from the outset. No slackers are allowed in this unit.

Swift is a gifted chameleon, who has sung with the aptly named Postmodern Jukebox and her own hard rock band. Here, she played the required role, dressed in jazz age garb and fixing her pipes on the stuff of “Laugh with Charlie” (dedicated to Chaplin), “The Gypsy in My Soul,” and an encore of “Embraceable You.”

One of the developments in the band’s evolution, as heard on their new album Evolution, is a greater emphasis on original tunes, but even these are rooted in the style of their late namesake. Amidst the presence of new songs, perhaps the most memorable moment came with Reinhardt’s timeless jewel “Nuages,” here delivered in all its wistful balladic glory with Swift singing a lyric written by her mother.

Even those of us who are skeptical about the shamelessly historicist faux Django subculture can be swept into the friendly heat of the musical moment. That is, when the moment-making machine is as well-oiled as this Django-phonic unit.

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Home Fires Singing

On the classical stage, even as contemporary composers and performers push the envelope and challenge conventions, traditional staging is a way of being. It is refreshing and rare, then, to encounter off-norm settings such as what we found with Dutch clarinetist Gerbrich Meijer’s fascinating recital last week at Music Academy of the West’s (MAW) Hahn Hall. It had the standard appurtenances of the formal concert stage — a central spotlight for the gifted soloist and her unimpeachably fine accompanist Conor Hanick manning the Steinway — along with the comforts of home, in the form of a comfy chair and lamp as the perch where Meijer read letters related to specific pieces on the program, called “Pieces of Home.”

It lent a literally intimate air to the business of a classical recital, along with such letters as Leonard Bernstein writing to Benny Goodman, Shostakovich to composer Mieczysław Weinberg and Meijer’s own e-mails to living composers Derek Bermel and Béla Kovács.

Meijer was appearing in the MAW’s “off season” Mariposa Series, showcasing notable alums out making a name for themselves in the larger music world, returning to the scene of their generally fondly recalled summer sessions in Montecito. This year’s official “Alumni Performance Award Winner,” who summered at the lush Miraflores campus in 2020 through 2022 — and studied with Hanick among other faculty — assembled a diverse and satisfying range of pieces for her “homey” outing.

Poulenc’s Sonata for Clarinet and Piano — written for Goodman — paved the way for such tasty surprises as the romantic pleasantry of Marie Elisabeth Von Sachsen-Meiningen’s Romanze in F. Best of all, Bermel’s Bells of Westerforen was a world premiere tribute to the great Dutch composer Louis Andriessen, and, like its dedicatee, a deceptively simple-sounding work with greater depth on closer scrutiny. Like Andriessen, Bermel’s language plays like a tough love, steelier variation on minimalism, with more tonal tensions and sneaky rhythmic tactics than the American m-word purveyors.

For another piece of Meijer’s personality, she encored with her humble variation on Adele’s “Hometown Glory,” though warning “I am not a pianist and I’m not a singer, but shall give it a try.” Correction: In addition to her clarinet mastery, she is a singer of understated nuance, who sings like she means it.

Mondays in the Swing Factories

Mondays got a whole lot spicier and more swinging in November, thanks to the ever-alluring big band force of the Monday Madness Band at SOhO and then the Garvin Theatre on its home turf of Santa Barbara City College. Director Andrew Martinez is the right person in charge of the prized ship.

At SOhO, prize soloists included trumpeter/flugelhornist Phil Rodriguez, the mighty drummer Dick Weller, and veteran educator David Tolegian subbing on baritone sax. All eyes and ears were also on a new dynamic presence in the ranks, the assured vocalist Sophie Holt, bold of tone and deep in the classic jazz vocal tradition. Holt also played a starring role in the Garvin concert, reprising the charts “Satin Doll” (Quincy Jones’ arrangement), Steven Feifke’s oddball chart on “On the Street Where You Live,” and “Until the Real Thing Comes Along.” Holt also nimbly swapped riffs with silken and fiery tenor saxist Justin Claveria.

The Garvin affair, dubbed “Big Band Blowout,” also featured the Good Times Band, led by Eric Heidner and the Lunch Break Big Band, whose included standout solos from longtime SBCC faculty Jim Mooy on trumpet and a steamily righteous solo by drummer Nathan Cartier. The upshot: good things are still cooking, jazz-wise, at SBCC.

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To-Doings:

Hopeless fans of contemporary classical music in town have had access to content for 30 plus years, since composer-professor William Kraft founded the Ensemble for Contemporary Music (ECM) at UCSB. ECM has been semi-hiding in plain-ish sight ever since, led for years by Jeremy Haladyna and with a rotating cast of directors since his retirement.

Current director Jonathan Moerschel — a lecturer at the university and member of the respected Calder String Quartet — leads one of the ensemble’s few concerts during the academic year this Wednesday, December 3. The program includes music by Philip Glass, Ellen Reid, Hannah Kendall, and Philip Cashian, extending the long lineage that this ever-morphing group has represented, even if the margins of the Santa Barbara scene.

Count Albert Lee is one of those humble guitar heroes in the pantheon, whose ever-fluid and tasteful playing has been a secret sauce in the bands led by Emmylou Harris (in her rightly named Hot Band), Eric Clapton, and The Everly Brothers, along with his own solo career. Buzz names and a couple of Grammy awards aside, the kindly Lee delivers on the half-truth of his signature tune with the hook “I’m just a country boy at heart.” When Lee returns to the friendly haunt of SOhO on Wednesday, December 3, he will no doubt deliver steamy fine riffs on the extended ending of “Country Boy,” and much more.

He will be the second hot, country-plus guitar stylist in this room within a month, following the stunning guitar work of Jerry Miller, longtime ally of Americana favorite Eilen Jewell. It appears that SOhO is a regular tasty lick palace.

Other musical news: that great American band outta’ East L.A., Los Lobos, makes an always welcome return to the Lobero Theatre, with opener Dave Alvin and the Guilty Ones, on Thursday, December 4.

Jazz pianist Antonio Artese dons a different hat or two with his new “Music & Meditation” series, kicking off on Friday, December 5 at the Music Academy’s Weinman Hall at 2 p.m. The event features both guided meditation by Jessica Kolbe and Artese performing a range of classical works.