This version of ON the Beat was initially emailed to subscribers on August 3, 2023. To obtain Josef Woodard’s music e-newsletter in your inbox every Thursday, join at impartial.com/newsletters.
Viva LaLa Touchdown
By way of this weekend, revelry, road gastronomy, and customarily permitted party-time habits descends on our city. Throngs, each locals and out-of-towners, will hit the Fiesta parade threading alongside Cabrillo Boulevard on Friday afternoon. They’ll flock the a number of Mercados (together with a newcomer, El Mercado del Playa, on the Leadbetter Seashore-adjacent Del Playa Stadium car parking zone), for meals, music, dance, and chilling/loitering. Cultural respects and rituals are additionally stirred into the combination — relying on one’s degree of engagement in Santa Barbara’s annual “Previous Spanish Days” custom.
One of many nice traditions throughout Fiesta time takes place up on the hill and aside from the official Fiesta zone, within the type of the Mariachi Competition, on the Santa Barbara Bowl on Saturday, August 5. Now as much as its twenty sixth annual occasion, and with a high-profile respectability within the Mariachi world far past Southern California, the epic mini-festival runs virtually 5 hours and funnels earnings into scholarships for college-bound youths. On the roster this 12 months are Edith Marquez, El Mariachi del Divo, Majo Aguilar, Mariachi Femenil Nuevo Tecalitlan, Mariachi Angeles, and Mariachi Garibaldi.
Name it a celebration of “Previous Jalisco Days,” given Mariachi’s birthplace within the mid-Nineteenth century. Data right here.
It Takes a Village
For causes legitimate and in any other case, Santa Barbara may be vulnerable to having an inflated civic ego, basking in our repute as a presumed paradise, as American cities go. For these of us within the 99 p.c demographic, the impulse is partly a protection mechanism, a means of justifying the pains and sacrifices of having the ability to afford or finagle to outlive right here. Our inflated self-regard is commonly validated by glowing experiences from respected sources. Two weeks in the past, Architectural Digest rightly named the wonderful Lobero Theatre one of many “11 Most Stunning Theaters within the World.” Duh.
Final Sunday, the New York Occasions (which periodically pays visits to Santa Barbara as a go-to journey vacation spot) ran a longish piece with the self-descriptive headline “What’s it About Montecito?” (hyperlink).
In her report, author Amy Larocca gives a wise, flyover statement of the famed village the place extra is anticipated. She takes Lotusland into consideration, naturally, in addition to the prosperous and influencer-fueled playgrounds, the tony Rosewood compound, and the soon-to-be Thomas Keller-ized Coral On line casino. She additionally sneaks in some wry feedback within the reportorial margins, e.g. “Typically it’s so quiet and so fairly in Montecito that I discover myself questioning if that is what it’s prefer to be useless.”
Larocca drops the proper superstar resident names — largely a “first identify foundation” roster, together with Oprah, Harry/Meghan, Gwyneth, Ellen (D), the allegedly semi-tyrannical Ty… However she forgot to say a number of names with musical connections, equivalent to Montecito’s token jazz superstar, the eminent Charles Lloyd, banjo champion (as in a single who each performs effectively however champions the devices) Steve Martin, and late-blooming rocker-troubadour Jeff Bridges. Incidental observe: each Lloyd and Bridges have launched albums on the good American Blue Notice label. However that’s one other story: what’s it concerning the musical subplot of Montecito?
Music Academy Nook
Come to think about it, Larocca would possibly effectively have a minimum of dropped in point out of a deeply-ingrained musical element of Montecito, being the globally-celebrated summer time program on the Music Academy (previously Music Academy of the West, till a name-change throughout final 12 months’s seventy fifth anniversary season). The Academy’s homebase of the historic Miraflores Property, nearly neighboring Ty Warner’s large cliff-facing unfold, is certainly probably the most musical piece of actual property in Montecito, with efficiency tendrils drifting into downtown venues of the Granada, the Lobero and elsewhere in Santa Barbara, correct.
The tip is in sight for this summer time’s eight-week smorgasbord of great musical issues (plus some lighter froth, equivalent to final week’s Cabaret 1979 –see Leslie Dinaberg’s evaluation), closing out with the ultimate Academy Competition Orchestra live performance on the Granada Theater on Saturday, August 5. For anybody in search of to both keep away from or add to this weekend’s Fiesta-ivities, get thee to the Granada.
Main the younger however not-surprisingly refined orchestra of Academy fellows is the revered Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu, whose resume consists of visitor spots with the Chicago and Boston orchestras, has a rising repute within the opera discipline, and has earned love and Grammy nominations for a discography gamely showcasing the modernist likes of Lutoslawski, Ligeti, and the famed Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara.
Modernism is, nevertheless, not on the menu this Saturday night time. To cap off the MA calendar, Lintu presents a program of two main works from completely different emotional/epochal locations — Richard Strauss’ heroic Ein Heldenleben and Tchaikovsky’s definitively romantic Romeo and Juliet.
A number of the memorable Academy fare arrives with minimal fanfare or promotional splash. Final week, one of many charming peripheral Academy nights out (or in) came about within the elegant parlor-like Lehmann Corridor contained in the Miraflores, that includes members of the London Symphony Orchestra — which has had a partnership relationship with the Academy for a number of years. Right here was an opportunity to listen to chamber music from lesser-trafficked repertoire of Villa-Lobos (that includes flutist Gareth Davis and cellist David Cohen), Benjamin Britten (Cohen and the Academy’s personal Natasha Kislenko on piano), younger Scottish-Greek composer Electra Perivolaris (from flutist Davis), a jazz snack from trombonist Peter Moore, and “somewhat Hadyn to shut.” And it was a tasty, elegant little bit of parlor music, at that.
Verify the calendar right here.
