ON the Beat | The Season of Public Pianism

This edition of ON the Beat was originally emailed to subscribers on October 19, 2023. To receive Josef Woodard’s music newsletter in your inbox each Thursday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.

A sure sonic/spatial sign that we’re in the midst of autumn greets our senses when we head down to State Street each October: ’Tis the season of public pianism.

Launched as an adjunct to the vibrant and idealistic Notes for Notes project, “Pianos on State” has thankfully continued with a life of its own, tended by the Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative and Santa Barbara Creative Arts Workshop. The tradition has become a delicious perennial public art/music experience, with elaborately and sometimes funkily painted spinet pianos in various states of being in tune (or, to be charitable, applying microtonal logic) and/or colorfully painted by a diverse swath of artists.

Public art meets a public-invited music agenda, as the pianos are made available to the general public to play. Some partakers are over-accomplished street musicians, and some have much more modest skills — and sometimes more confidence and gumption than actual piano chops. These are sometimes the most entertaining of the bunch.

Credit: Josef Woodard

While the concentration of instruments stretches from the corner of Victoria down to Cota Street, don’t neglect visiting the piano at the literal end of State — on the scenic Stearns Wharf. The other day, a long-haired pianist was seen on the wharf, serenading a small crowd with some harmless New Age noodling.

Credit: Josef Woodard

At State & A (Anapamu, for those who don’t remember the long-standing State & A restaurant on that corner), a many-colored piano has the distinction of a tree-stump slice as a seat. A fancy red Spanish motif decorates the piano perched at the corner of Carrillo and State, which felt especially at-home after a downtown stroll following a Sunday-afternoon performance of Opera Santa Barbara’s production of Bizet’s Carmen.

On the corner of Figueroa and State, a piano marked “Santa Barbara Swing Town” was being put to good use by a man riffing on some unrecognizable theme inside his head, with a tolling pedal-point bass note thrumming. Down the street, a young man gets lost in a minor mode groove on the octopus-festooned piano at Canon Perdido.

Jumping into the fair game of Pianos on State, I tried my hand at improvising. I played only the black keys — a pentatonic-flavored trick for making us non-pianists sound like we know what we’re doing. After finishing my impromptu etude, a man pays me a compliment, the first time in my life I’ve gotten a good review for my “piano playing.” And probably the last.

Mark your calendar: Friday (Oct. 20) from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., it’s time for the “Masq(p)arade: A Performance Progressive for Pianos on State.” Pianists and local arts groups will lead the parade, stopping for 15-minute performances from Carrillo to Victoria streets. No charge to the public, and plenty of potential charm in store.

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Power Trio in the Big House Chamber

We have been trained to expect great things from the UCSB Arts & Lectures (A&L) series each year, and the current season is off and running in impressive ways. Often, the classical component, a vital piece of the programming puzzle, veers off in interesting and offbeat directions in terms of projects and programs.
        
To open the A&L classical roster this year, however, what we got at the Granada Theatre last week was an encounter with a genuine classical music power trio — pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, violinist Lisa Batiashvili and cellist Gautier Capuçon, virtuosos all, and good-looking people, to boot — heading down the middle of the road, repertoire-wise. A meat-and-potato plate of sharply focused Haydn, Ravel (Piano Trio in A minor, the concert’s highlight) and Mendelssohn (Piano Trio in C minor, an anti-climactic romantic romp) amply demonstrated the ensemble wares of the players. But it did little to excite musical discovery in terms of the repertory turf.
        
Formed in 2018, the stellar trio has thus far been performing outside the United States, and its Granada concert was, in fact, an American debut, a feather in the host’s already multi-feathered cap.

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TO-DOINGS:

Help, there is a pile-up on the cultural calendar this Friday! What’s the broad-minded music lover to do?

Over in the hallowed and officially historic Lobero Theatre, Americana comes to town in a powerhouse double-header way, with the arrival of the legendary Patty Griffin and inspired East Nashville song-man and wise guy Todd Snider. The show tickles fond memories of the long-running “Sings like Hell” series at the Lobero, a fertile showcase for the best and brightest (and sometimes, under-rated) Americana treasures.

Over at Hahn Hall, Bach aficionados need to be alerted: Camerata Pacifica (known as the Bach Camerata in its early days) is launching a new baroque sub-series with a program called “From Bach to Bolivia.” Flutist Emi Ferguson will perform on period instruments, ranging from Bach works to Baroque-era Bolivian music, recently unearthed and worth checking out.
        
Unfortunately, on Friday, this conflicted scribe/cross-genre music has to opt for the Top, ZZ Top, the all-American smart-party band outta Texas, making a stop on its “Raw Whiskey” tour at the Arlington. Time ticks on and the Top prevails, in the shadow of original bassist Dusty Hill’s passing in 2021. They’re still super bad, and nationwide (probably my favorite Top tune, “I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide” — here).