ON the Beat | Beginning to Sounding

When December’s Sonic Seasonal Greetings Enter the Calendar Options

By Josef Woodard Fri Dec 06, 2024 | 12:00pm

This edition of ON the Beat was originally emailed to subscribers on December 5, 2024. To receive Josef Woodard’s music newsletter in your inbox on Fridays, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.

Come December, try as we might, avoiding the sounds and aura of Christmas may be a fool’s errand. Celebrations tied to the season, along with invasive commercial lures and indoctrinations, keep our heads and senses aswim in holiday consciousness — barring an intentional escape plan. For others … might as well give into the feeling and the concert ops, especially if your jam is choral music, that staple of Christmastime culture.

Santa Barbara’s December music calendar is, in some ways, one of the most — and mostly wonderfully — predictable times of the year. This year, choices must be made by the avid yule-tune seeker: The weekend of December 14 and 15 finds a crosstown traffic of programs, between the Santa Barbara Chorale Society’s (SBCS) always-enticing and serial-festive “Hallelujah Project” at the Lobero Theatre, the compelling Nathan Kreitzer–directed a cappella group Quire of Voyces at St. Anthony’s Chapel (nestled in the ever-morphing St. Anthony’s Seminary property). The same weekend, in a shift from its former early December timing, the Westmont College’s 20th annual “Christmas Festival,” this one dubbed “Dwelling Place,” returns to The Granada Theatre as a base.

Nathan Kreitzer and Quire of Voyces | Photo: Courtesy

In other notable anniversary news, the “Hallelujah Project” is celebrating its 10th edition this year, and it abides by a continuing agenda/recipe. The SBCS blends music from high and less-high cultural zones and a climax of a musical setting of A Christmas Carol replete with a celebrity in the reading rocker. This year’s spotlight goes to theater and TV actress Meredith Baxter (Family Ties), who has lived in town for years.

Kirk Franklin and Miriam Dance at Gospel Brunch at SOhO | Credit: Leslie Dinaberg

For the extra-hungry Christmas music lover, head over to SOhO at noon Sunday for the delicious gospel extravaganza “Miriam Dance Presents Gospel Bunch,” which left me more than inspired last year. It’s another S.B. holiday tradition in the making.

On Tuesday, December 17, the First Presbyterian Church will host an audience singalong with a passion and a deep tradition when the 42nd annual Messiah Sing Along blurs the line between performers and beholders. In a performance benefitting the ever-worthy Unity Shoppe, this Messiah features Phillip McLendon as conductor, Erin Bonski-Evans on organ, and as soloists, soprano Nichole Dechaine, also Max Potter, tenor Lorenzo Johnson Jr., and bass soloist Matthew Peterson.

For a Christmas pageantry of olde, minus the Christ business, we have been blessed with the annual a-religious revelry of the “The Christmas Revels: A Winter Solstice Celebration” since its founding by Susan Keller in 2007, each year bedecked in a different theme and setting.

This year’s model, settling into the Lobero on the Solstice weekend of December 21 and 22, takes on the context of “The Ghosts of Haddon Hall,” in which the family of the Duke of Rutland, circa 1926, cavort with apparitional ghosts most holy-o (to quote Captain Beefheart) during Winter Solstice. The format allows for a playlist of European music and dance and folklore traditions from over several centuries.

Last year, the timeless theme of immigration — a hot topic about to be plunged into very hot water — was accessed by a theme of migrants from various nations forcibly converging and learning to get along, in “Tales from Ellis Island.” The revelry happily continues, like calendar clockwork.

Pink Martini, the cheeky-cool, retro-lounge-y medicine show outta Portland, Oregon,has also becomea recurring Christmas season visitor in these parts. In the thick of its 30th anniversary season, the Pink thing is making its way back into the Arlington Theatre for a holiday wingding, presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures on Tuesday, December 17.

Founded in 1994 by keyboardist and ringleader Thomas Lauderdale, whose piano work often goes to a Liberace-esque place, the Martini is a sensation unto itself, a little big band which has won a vast and demographically diverse fan base over the years. Original vocalist China Forbes, whose spot has sometimes been occupied by Storm Large, is back in the fold. For its holiday show, we can count on “White Christmas” and the signature samba-fied “Auld Lang Syne,” among other party treats.

To-Doings:

In other non-Christmas-related musical news, the big event of the weekend — especially for those of us avowed contemporary music fans — is the return of the rightfully acclaimed JACK string quartet, Saturday night at Hahn Hall. The concert is part of the still-young but fast-growing “Mariposa” series put forth in the “off season” by the rich summer program Music Academy of the West. JACK, currently in its 20th season, has become a premiere advocate of new music in the known world, and the upcoming program blends contemporary sounds with JACK violinist/composer Christopher Otto deconstructions of early music sources (see Independent story here).

For something more or less completely different (although some trace elements of Christmas music may appear), head over to the enchanting and historic Alcazar Theatre in Carpinteria to catch the latest local appearance by Jonathan Richman, on Tuesday, December 10. Richman is a cult artist favorite from the way back, former head of the influential garage-folk-punk outfit the Modern Lovers and maker of a songbook teeming with whimsy, surrealism, and a certain charming, alien sensibility.

Richman used to pop by the storied and fondly remembered Mercury Lounge in Old Goleta, or at SOhO. On Tuesday, he goes modestly theatrical in the Alcazar, joined by old pal Tommy Larkins on drums.

Lastly, whatever your musical tastes or cultural coordinates, don’t miss a chance to catch newgrass/bluegrass sensation Molly Tuttle at Campbell Hall on Friday night, the rootsy left-titling Americana event of the current Arts & Lectures season.