Page 330 - ASMF Marriner 100 Coverage Book

This edition of ON the Beat was originally emailed to subscribers on March 4, 2024. To
receive Josef Woodard’s music newsletter in your inbox each Thursday, sign up
at independent.com/newsletters.

It is customary that, in the “serious” music circles, April brings it on. We can count on
various presenters to steer their seasons to some of its most formidable
programming in this springtime holy month. In Santa Barbara this year, that tradition
stands. It’s time to take stock of the many tempting concert options and get outta
the house.

On Tuesday of this week, CAMA ended its luminous (if slightly truncated) season on
the high note(s) of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields stirring up sonic splendor
at the Granada. Joshua Bell appeared as violinist-leader, and the program boasted a
brand-new piece, Flight of Moving Days, by noted jazz-classical composer Vince
Mendoza, with percussionist Douglas Marriner in a spotlight of a work in tribute to
his grandfather and Academy founder Sir Neville Marriner.

April’s slate of calendar-marking concerts includes two of the world’s premier — and
more forward-thinking — string quartets at Campbell Hall, hosted by UCSB Arts &
Lectures. The Danish String Quartet ends its Doppelgänger series with a new
Thomas Adès piece, on Tuesday, April 10 (see story here), and the bellwether new-
minded Kronos Quartet, a frequent visitor to Santa Barbara over the decades, stops
here on Saturday, April 27, as part of its grand 50th anniversary. (Is that possible?
They seem so forever young.)

Over in the Santa Barbara Symphony corner, this month’s program tilts in an
Israeli/Jewish direction with its Mahler Meets Klezmer: Titans of Sound program,
combining Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, “Titan,” and idiomatically nimble klezmer
advocate/apostate David Krakauer performing Polish-born film composer Wlad
Marhulets’s Concerto for Klezmer Clarinet. Opera Santa Barbara closes another
engaging and varied season on a contemporary and Spanish theme, with Hector
Armienta’s 2022 version of Zorro, at the Lobero Theatre April 19 and 21.

Choices will be tough on that weekend, with the Symphony, Opera S.B., and a
significant local recital on the calendar: Young violin sensation Randall
Goosbymakes his local debut at Hahn Hall on Saturday, April 20, with a program
including important Black composer Florence Price, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and
William Grant Still.

And not to forget the venerable chamber music magnet that is Camerata Pacifica,
always delivering musical depth and diversity at Hahn Hall (one of four venues on its
monthly SoCal-hopping schedule). This month’s model, on Friday, April 26, has a
special appeal for those of us craving more Baroque music in our aural diets, with a
French Baroque menu featuring underrated great Rameau (the star of Daniil
Trifonov’s masterful piano recital last year, incidentally) and 18th-century French
composer Anne Madeleine Guédon de Presles. Yes, she was a she.