ON the Beat | Klezmer and Jazzbo Energies Abuzz in the 805

This edition of ON the Beat was originally emailed to subscribers on April 25, 2024. To receive Josef Woodard’s music newsletter in your inbox each Thursday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.

Exploring Orchestral Klezmerica

As an opening salvo for last weekend’s Santa Barbara Symphony (SBS) program at the Granada, the orchestra plunged gamely and crisply into the bright, brisk fare of Mozart’s Overture to The Abduction from the Seraglio to shake us awake. It was a very fine place to start. Then came the meat of the matter, in an interesting thematic program called “Mahler meets Klezmer.” That it did, in inventive fashion, and with famed klezmer clarinetist, torch-keeper and deconstructionist David Krakauer in the soloist hot spot.

Maestro Nir Kabaretti, an Israeli who has often programmed Israeli and Jewish music, had the bright notion of highlighting the subtle implication of klezmer music in Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 “Titan” — which closed the concert’s second half with focused fanfare and heft. By way of explaining the program’s concept and answering the question Kabaretti has had to sometimes address — “What is this klezmer thing?”— the clarinetist and orchestra played through a well-known example of klezmer culture, which is also touched on in Mahler’s Symphony.

Krakauer then showed his considerable chops and deeply embedded mastery — on his instrument and in the Eastern-European Jewish genre — on Wlad Marhulets’s Concerto for Klezmer Clarinet. At times, the piece feels less like an integrated contemporary music structure than a case of klezmer with orchestral window dressing, but the culture-crossing novelty didn’t fail to dazzle, thanks in no small part to Krakauer’s flowing talent. His improvisational asides in the “Ad libitum” movement reminded us that his voice stands tall in the modern klezmer world.

An encore of the klezmer classic “Der Heyser Bulgar (The Hot Bulgar)” found Krakauer further unveiling his improvisational moxie, climaxing with his trademark use of the circular breathing technique to coax high, sustaining notes. And the crowd went wild.

After intermission, Kabaretti and company amply demonstrated the clean-burning power of this orchestra, on the affirmative landscape of Mahler’s First. Parts, narrative arcs and propulsive forces were well in place in a performance evolving from the misty opening (and later recapitulation) through the bonding energy of the second movement, the mournful (and klezmer-alluding) third movement and the stormy agitations turned lyrical by symphony’s satisfying finale.

The SBS season comes to a close on May 18 and 19 with another extra-classical invited genre guest in store — the return of jazz pianist Marcus Roberts and trio, taking on Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, at 100. Also on the program, Charles Ives’s Symphony No. 2 takes us out of another nicely varied season for an orchestra in taut, impressive form.

Up in the Air, Down in the Groove

I confess to having hesitations about catching Birdman Live last Friday, having seen this presentation of drummer/film score composer Antonio Sanchez playing live to Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2014 film Birdman years ago. And this would be the third screening of the film for me, and I’m one who tends not to rewatch films.

But I was more than pleased and even thrilled by the Arlington Theatre’s live-screened event, hosted by UCSB Arts & Lectures. Iñárritu’s film seems even more bold, brilliant and iconoclastic than ever, partly due to the tepid nature of Hollywood films over the past decade (Poor Things is a notable anomaly to that rule). The film prophetically indicts the artistic pollution of the Marvel Universe in Hollywood, which has only added insult to injury to movieland over the years. Along the way, Birdman whips up its surrealistic tail-spinning on the themes of midlife crisis and artistic angst, woven into the seamless omniscience of Emmanuel Lubezki’s staggering cinematography — which rightfully nabbed an Oscar.

And, of course, Iñárritu made the inspired choice of breaking with generic film music protocol by hiring Sanchez to drum up his inventive score. One complaint might be that Birdman Live doesn’t showcase enough of Sanchez’s mastery as a drummer, but he more than compensated when stretching out over the end credits and then continuing into a 10-minute drum solo that was truly stunning, dynamically nuanced and, yes, cinematic in its power and sweep.

Touché to all aboard and on screen.

A Busy Jazz Week

Just when jazz-hungry Santa Barbarans thought it was safe to whine about a paucity of live jazz in town, we were happily rebuked. In the course of a single week, the city was treated with showcases of some of the greatest jazz from Los Angeles and the world beyond. Antonio Sanchez’s sublime splash at the Arlington came at the tail end of a week that began the previous Saturday at the Granada Centennial Weekend shindig, with arranger-composer Chris Walden’s ambitious young Pacific Jazz Orchestra making its Santa Barbara debut — and wowing as it went (read review here). Ever-eminent and potently influential keyboardist and mood-lifter Herbie Hancock paid a rare visit to Santa Barbara, selling out the Arlington last Wednesday.

And the following night in a humbler but supremely jazz-suitable room, the new “Jazz at Center Stage” series hosted some of the finest jazz musicians on the west coast. Tenor saxist Bob Sheppard and guitarist Larry Koonse headlined a two-set night of inspired jazz, alongside ace drummer Clarence Penn (now on the West Coast after taking the USC teaching post left vacant by the retirement of master drummer Peter Erskine — who, incidentally, was the drive train in the Pacific Jazz Orchestra). Special kudos go to robust bassist Santino Tafarella, the nimble musician who grew up in Santa Barbara and has taken root in Los Angeles, and who arranged this jazz night. Sheppard’s vocalist wife Maria Puga Lareo offered up glowing-tone renditions of “Alfie,” Jobim’s “I Know I’ll Love You,” and the handsome Sheppard original “Maria’s Tango.”

Watch this space, and that space, for future jazz nights out at Center Stage.

To-Doings:

New music fans, and more general music fans, will want to show up at Campbell Hall on Saturday night, when the lofty yet neighborly and hip Kronos Quartet celebrates its 50th anniversary.
           
Camerata Pacifica settles into Hahn Hall on Friday, as part of its monthly plan in that fine space, but with a difference this time out: The program leans into the winds of French Baroque. Consider it an equal time/equal opportunity repertoire op.