ON the Beat | PatKop’s Return, Mariza’s Mood Painting

This edition of ON the Beat was originally emailed to subscribers on October 10, 2024. To receive Josef Woodard’s music newsletter in your inbox on Fridays, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.

It’s safe to say that a certain segment of the music-loving community in the 805 more or less fell in love with the artist nicknamed “PatKop,” in an up-close and personal way, back in 2018. In that year, the rightly acclaimed and imagination-fired violinist born in Moldavia as Patricia Kopatchinskaja wowed the Ojai Music Festival crowd when she subbed for Esa-Pekka Salonen as a music director with fresh, awakening ideas, and soon after made her local recital debut at Hahn Hall, another crowd wowing event.

Six years later and deeper into her high-flying and heralded career, PatKop returns to town as a soloist with no less a notable orchestra than the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) for a UCSB Arts & Lectures presentation at the Granada on Saturday, October 12. Kopatchinskaja will take on Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No.1, while the LPO’s principal conductor Edward Gardner will lead the warhorse-y Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4 (also on the Santa Barbara Symphony’s opening program a week later), and for contemporary muse’s sake, Tania León’s Raices (Origins).

Although Santa Barbara has been privy to the might and refined touch of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) in recent years through the aegis of the Music Academy of the West and CAMA, the “other” major London-rooted orchestra, the LPO, is a rarer visitor hereabouts, and a welcome one.

In an interview, I asked Kopatchinskaja if her intense schedule and tireless creative energy kept her vitalized. “Indeed, it does,” she said, “but I fear it could also kill me on stage at any given point. In fact, it was always my dream to die on stage, I might stage once my own death — could be an interesting project. I could just fly away — at the end of Berg’s Violin Concerto.”

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Fado Time, from a Master

There’s nothing quite like the musical world, or sub-world, of Portuguese fado. The inherently celebratory yet melancholic tradition, born in the more economically downtrodden quarters of Lisbon, has been compared to such cultural phenoms as flamenco in Spain and the blues in America, as passionate musical expression forged in conditions of social oppression and struggle and have become powerfully influential musical bedrocks.

Santa Barbara has had the privilege of catching live performances by such legends as Cesária Évora at the Lobero, where we will also have another chance to hear the prominent fado artist Mariza, an acknowledged present-day torch-keeper of the fado flame, on Wednesday, October 16. Although she has combined her fado roots with hip hop and other musical ingredients — as on last year’s album Home — the roots remain strong, as she demonstrated with the forlorn depth and luster of her strings-lined 2020 album Sings Amália, a tribute to fado queen Amália Rodrigues (1920-99). Though born in Mozambique, Mariza was raised in famed fado zones of Lisbon, Mouraria, and Alfama, and after singing jazz, soul, and gospel in her younger years, was encouraged by her father to delve deeply into fado. Millions of albums sold, accolades, and spotlights on the world stage later, Mariza has come to represent the world’s idea of what modern fado is about. Her Lobero show promises to be one of the so-called “world music” high points of the year.

Notes on the Opened Season

Summer is over, as we surely know now that the official 2024-25 concert season has busted out of the gates of late summer lassitude and sanctioned laziness. Last week, UCSB Arts & Lectures’ rich and vibrant tapestry of a schedule kicked off on a thinking-person’s party band note with the return of the ever-popular neo-fusion mongrel Snarky Puppy.

The taut but rambunctious, hook-filled little big band à la funk, energized a full house at the Arlington Theatre. Jazz nerd ears are not required to enjoy the goods, a setlist largely leaning on their latest album, Empire Central. In the ever-shifting ranks — led by indomitable, independent-minded, founder-composer-bassist-ringleader Michael League — was the bold tenor saxist Bob Reynolds, who has local linkages.

Speaking of local angles, League sent a found shout-out to the late S.B. County legend David Crosby, who League consorted and collaborated with towards the end of his life. Introducing the concert-closing tune “Chonks,” one of the Puppy’s best-loved numbers, League mentioned that Crosby mentioned that the song “swings like a big dog.” Sure enough.

A very different cultural concoction landed at Hahn Hall on Saturday night as the Music Academy of the West’s still-young “Mariposa Series” launched with soprano Karen Slack’s impressive socio-historical project “African Queens.” A variety of contemporary composers have contributed pieces to the song cycle, celebrating the legacies of African queens — many of whom are obscure in the west.

Slack’s potent and supple vocal skills carried the day and sold the concept on various levels, abetted by the sensitive pianist Kevin Miller. Among the highlights of the program were David Ragland’s “The Queen of Sheba” (text by Alicia Haymer) — a queen we are well-acquainted with — Damian Geter’s “Amanirenas”(text by Lorene Cary), about the ruler of the kingdom of Kush, Shawn Okpebholo’s “A Letter from Queen Ufua” (text by Tsitsi Ella Jaji), and Joel Thompson’s “Queen Nanny’s Lullaby” (text by Mary Ground).

Perhaps the most memorable moment of the evening came with well-established composer Jesse Montgomery’s “The Song of Nzingah” (text by Jay St. Flono), so named after a notable African queen, and the composer’s own original name, swapped out for Jessie for the sake of assimilating into white-dominated culture. Therein lies a cross-historical reference, related to systemic racial pressures in the “new land.” (Note: Montgomery has been integrated into the Music Academy’s life and concert programming — lucky for us in the listening-up public).

Slack brought her African diasporic musical mission back home to America at concert’s end, with a hearty dose of gospel spirit for an encore.

Next up in the Mariposa series, new music champion group, JACK Quartet, at Hahn Hall on December 7.

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To-Doings:

In one of the last shows of the current Santa Barbara Bowl season, new/old school pop-soul star Leon Bridges plays the Bowl on Wednesday, October 16. Jazz hits SOhO this week in the form of the Santa Barbara Jazz Society’s monthly shindig on Sunday afternoon, featuring vocalist Erich Harrington and the always-ear-pleasing Santa Barbara City College Big Band on Monday night.

The Santa Barbara Acoustic organization, bringers of hot-fingered acoustic guitarists from around the world, has been spotlighting finer S.B.-based artists of late, including Tom Ball and Kenny Sultan this Saturday at CAW (Community Arts Workshop). Masters of the country blues, Ball and Sultan are local treasures and long in the tooth, in the best way — possibly the oldest musical group in town apart from the Santa Barbara Symphony. (Fact checkers are welcome to weigh in).