ON the Beat | Blues Brothers, Classical Muse-ing, Sam First Beckons

The blues is back in town. Not that it hasn’t been around, with Charlie Musselwhite, Guy Clark Jr. and a regular flow of Santa Barbara–based blues acts keeping various flames alive in recent weeks.

Let’s say that blues, in the societal sense, is back. The Santa Barbara Blues Society, born in 1977 and rightfully proud of its status as the oldest continuous blues society in the nation, returns to the Carrillo Rec Center on Saturday, with a welcome return by the Delgado Brothers. The band outta East L.A., sometimes considered a candidate in the “best kept secret” category among west coast musical outfits, dishes up steamy blues and roots variants, with Latin tinges reminiscent of Los Lobos and Santana.

No doubt, the Brother-based band — long led by brothers Delgado, Joey on guitar and vocals, Steve on drums and vocals, and bassist Bob — will spark up the crowd and trigger dance fever suitable to get the historic Rec Center’s spring-loaded dance floor a shiver.

Classical Manners and Calls to Audience Action

After the traditional null period of August into early September, Santa Barbara’s rich classical concert season eases back onto the cultural calendar, and not a week too soon. The Camerata Pacifica season launches this Friday at Hahn Hall with an all-French program and a Debussy sandwich — the Images Book II for piano framed by Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello and Piano Trio in A minor. The remainder of the season, running through next May, revels in the usual admix of baroque to contemporary fare, with lots of tasty stuff in and from the middle,
           
A robust head’s up is in order concerning the first concert of the Santa Ynez Valley Concert Series, at Los Olivos’ St. Mark’s-in-the-Valley church on Friday, September 27th. The focus is on baroque harpsichord music — Rameau, Bach, and Carlatti in the mix — as performed by the highly-esteemed Paolo Bordignon, the official harpsichordist of the New York Philharmonic. Solo harpsichord recitals of note are rare hereabouts, a list including a profound encounter with Jean Rondeau performing the unedited version of Bach’s Goldberg Variations in Hahn Hall two years back.

L.A. Logbook: Sam First Beckons

After hearing the buzz about the still relatively-young jazz club Sam First in Los Angeles, I finally made the trek to see/hear what the buzz/fuss was about recently. I can confirm the rumors: Sam First ranks towards the top of the jazz venue list in the big city to the South, and is well worth a pilgrimage or three.

Among its quirkier features is its location, literally just outside the LAX zone, a seemingly unlikely and hardly centralized spot — unless you’re a jazz fan just arriving to town and getting a jazz-fortified welcome.
           
Once you’ve made it inside, however, the small but embracing room feels like a space and ambience removed from the outside world, as any good jazz club should. Escape here and enjoy the sensation of being in the company of fellow jazz lovers, not to mention the presence of some of the finest jazz musicians hailing from the increasingly respected jazz town of L.A.
           
Speaking of which, Tuesday is a special occasion, when the world class and ever-expansive and ever-impressive pianist Gerald Clayton appears both as a leader of a rotating cast of fine players and as presider over a jam session. On one memorable Tuesday a few weeks back, I caught Clayton — who Santa Barbarans have been blessed to hear with Charles Lloyd at the Lobero — in righteous cahoots with saxist Nicole McCabe and guitarist-composer Marcel Camargo, in a mostly Brazilian mode — samba, choro, Jobim-ana, and Brazilian-adjacent flavors.

After intermission, the jam session kicked up in earnest — what Clayton cheekily called “the anarchist portion of the evening. Anybody who wants to play just storm the stage.” Clayton’s grouping started the flow, with none other than brushes master Clayton (Tony Bennett, etc.) Cameron joining in to the tune of “I’ll Remember April.”

For the next hour, the host musicians turned the stage over to a group of quite astonishingly fine young players. Switching between players, usually tune-by-tune, they stormed the stage in the most musical ways, over the standard stuff of “It Could Happen to You” and “On Green Dolphin Street,” but also the serpentine energies of Sam Rivers’ “Cyclic Episode,” and “Close Your Eyes” to close. Cameron rejoined the stage for the last call, reminding us that this strong assembly of jazz musicians — known, unknown, and yet-to-be known — were in the house, and in a town becoming more and more of a “jazz town.” 
           
Leaving the club, we were reminded that the real worldly presence of LAX was but minutes away. Suffice to say, Sam First needs to be on any SoCal jazz fan’s radar/GPS.

TO-DOINGS:

Fans of very unplugged instrumental guitar playing will be happy to hear about two shows ushered into SOhO by the dogged S.B. Acoustic organization: Joe Robinson, who has been called an “heir apparent” to popular acoustic guitar wizard Tommy Emmanuel, shows up this Sunday, and the Transatlantic Guitar Trio returns next Thursday, September 26. The trio is comprised of German “G-word Jazz” wiz Joscho Stephan, Brit Richard Smith, and Nashville’s guitar wonder Rory Hoffman.

Having seen the group when they last played SOhO, I can attest to being most deeply impressed by the deep musicality, humor, and musicological savvy of Hoffman, a blind musician who plays guitar on his lap and proceeds to dazzle on levels beyond fretboard gymnastics.