Serious Musical Week Melts into a Serious Winter and Beyond
Life in the Classical and Jazz Concert Scene in Santa Barbara Heats Up This Week, and This Winter
In the realm of local “serious” music culture — classical, jazz, and related non-pop music — the long winter’s nap is over. That traditional null zone between mid-December and mid-January, where non-Christmas-related music generally leaves the building, officially gives way to a dense concert week ahead, with a rich winter schedule following on its heels. A winter’s cultural overview is in order.
Kicking off the busy week of enticements is the venerable Camerata Pacifica, at Hahn Hall on Friday, January 17. Baroque music specialist and flutist Emi Ferguson leads the still-formative baroque arm of the chamber group’s operation, with healthy doses of Bach (both traditional and “reinvented”) on the docket. The program boasts a special appearance by keyboardist Dan Tepfer (also a very fine jazz pianist and composer).
Mozart-mania takes over at The Granada Theatre on Saturday and Sunday, January 18-19, as maestro Nir Kabaretti leads the Santa Barbara Symphony in a more-than-mostly Mozart program. But you may want to leave Sunday afternoon or catch the stellar Miró string quartet, part of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s inviting chamber music program.
Tuesday marks the rebooting of the current UCSB Art & Lectures (A&L) season, with the return of the dynamo soprano Julia Bullock — whose performance of Messiaen’s Harawi last fall was a season high point. This time around, Bullock leaps from 20th-century modernism to Baroque splendors with the respected Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, making its local debut at the Lobero Theatre on January 21. A&L’s schedule continues on Friday, January 24, at Hahn Hall, with the local debut of wunderkind Russian pianist Alexander Malofeev, part of A&L’s illuminating Hear and Now series.
A dazzling classical parade continues through the winter, with the great Danish String Quartet’s virtually annual visit to town (a happy thing) at UCSB’s Campbell Hall on January 31, and the Imani Winds with Boston Brass at Hahn Hall on February 2. Another season must-catch is the duo of dynamic piano legends Yuja Wang and Víkingur Ólafsson at the Granada on February 28.
CAMA brings back the esteemed London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) to the Granada on February 18. As it happens, the Music Academy of the West’s new-ish Mariposa series will feature a group of LSO musicians on the night before their Granada concert at Hahn Hall on February 17.
Also of note on the Mariposa list is the arrival of yMusic at Hahn Hall, March 10, featuring a premiere of music by the bedazzling young composer Gabriella Smith.
Global-turned-local-gone-global violinist hero Gilles Apap brings his irrepressible musicality and blithe spirit to the Lobero for a CAMA Masterseries recital on March 8, dubbed “…for OLD times’ sake.”
The Santa Barbara Symphony, in which Apap was concertmaster for a minute, returns with a screen-timed event, Chaplin’s The Gold Rush with live orchestra accompaniment (February 15-16), and Opera Santa Barbara, which hit one outta the park with last fall’s Pagliacci, returns with Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, at the Lobero, February 21 and 23.
Jazz prospects are looking good this winter. The A&L roster includes the critically revered young alto saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin and her group Phoenix at Campbell Hall on February 7, and fusion-flavored piano wizard Hiromi with Sonicwonder at Campbell on April 25.
“Jazz at the Lobero” this spring sports the respected likes of Delfeayo Marsalis on March 7, Charles Lloyd Delta Trio (with pianist Jason Moran and guitarist Marvin Sewell) on March 14, and, for crooning’s sake, Michael Feinstein’s Tony Bennett Tribute on March 22.
And this just in: it was recently announced that the great genre-bending guitar hero Bill Frisell is bringing his GOOD DOG group, with Hollister Rancher Greg Leisz, bassist Tony Scherr and drummer Kenny Wollesen, to the Lobero on May 15. Mark those calendars. Frisell has appeared at the Lobero a few times in different incarnations, but it’s been too long. Frisell and the Lobero get along famously. That one deserves a jumbo Sharpie marker on the local music lover’s calendar.
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