Author Archives: joemiller

Christmas at Sea

The Christmas Revels at the Lobero Theatre, Saturday, December 20.

Review by Joseph Miller

D. Bazemore 2012

D. Bazemore 2012

The Santa Barbara Yule was twice-blessed by the isle of Éire this year. Early in December, UCSB Arts & Lectures hosted traditional Irish-Celtic super group Danú. Coincidentally, Santa Barbara Revels this past weekend set its festivities aboard the S.S. Furnessia making her 1907 sea voyage from Londonderry to Ellis Island during the Christmas holidays. Both shows spread delicacies refreshingly foreign to American holiday sensibilities: the Wexford Carol, rollicking jigs and reels, traditional Celtic dance, and songs in celebration of St. Stephen’s or Wren’s Day—the day of drinking, disguises and revelry on December 26.

But here in Santa Barbara revelry saturated the weekend prior to Christmas, thanks to Santa Barbara Revels. At seven years, the local tradition is, by all appearances, soundly rooted and flourishing. Santa Barbara Revels, founded by artistic director Susan Keller, is one in a network of ten companies nationwide that marks significant seasonal changes—especially the winter solstice—with performing arts celebrations of old world traditions. At one level, Revels is a theatrical spectacle with sets, costumes, drama, comedy, song, music and dance. Yet the spirit of the enterprise is community, and that cohesion was in abundant evidence this weekend: performing arts professionals melded with a spectrum of amateurs, volunteers and ultimately the audience. Patrons sang out enthusiastically on Saturday during sing-a-longs, and many brave souls even left their seats to join “The Lord of the Dance,” parading up the aisles hand-in-hand and out to the patio.

Much of the fun of Revels has to do with the sheer variety of the spectacle. Live music was the soul of the enterprise with two musical groups providing skilled accompaniment. Traditional string-based music was handled by a sextet—tagged ‘The Kilkenny Coterie’ for the occasion—and directed by tenor and guitarist Adam Phillips. Phillips not only conducted the performance, but as the new Revels Music Director, brought his multiple talents to bear selecting and arranging music—including a wonderful setting of Irish nationalist George William Russell’s “The Voice of the Sea.” A brass quintet dubbed ‘The Belfast Brass Ensemble’ and directed by trumpeter James Watson, rang-out in burnished holiday tones throughout the performance. The crowd showed great enthusiasm for four advanced dancers from Southern California’s Claddagh Dance Company who took the stage several times, skillfully demonstrating footwork-intensive Celtic dance. An annual Revels’ favorite was Santa Barbara’s Pacific Sword Company and their human-living-Mobius dance of mesmerizing twists and crossings.

The entire showcase was bound effectively by the narrative of Irish emigrants at sea en route to Ellis Island, holding uncertainties at bay by celebrating their heritage. Veteran Santa Barbara actors included Matt Tavianini, Bill Egan, Meredith McMinn and Simon Williams in leading roles and colorful dialects. Egan’s gregarious Welsh ‘Purser’, Tavianini’s reclusive Irish ‘Poet’, and Williams English ‘Captain’ were humorously set in friendly rivalry at times. The play opens, for example, with the Purser registering passengers as they board, and the idealistic Poet—nationalism in full display—giving his family name as “Ireland,” only to be rebuffed by the Purser’s amused skepticism. The Poet continues, however, with a line that speaks for the collective uncertainties of all emigrants, “Tread softly on my dreams.”

 

Interview with Tom Whitaker 10-31-14

Will Eno’s Middletown presented at UCSB

UCSB Theater - "Middletown" publicity 10/24/14 HSSB 1143Tom Whitaker is directing the UCSB Department of Theater and Dance’s fall production of Will Eno’s Middletown, a play which draws inspiration from Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, yet is stamped with the insignia of a playwright who has been called by the New York Times, “a Samuel Beckett for the Jon Stewart generation.” An essential shorthand for the play might be read in a Facebook meme Whitaker came across recently: “I’m in that awkward stage of life between birth and death.” Performed by twelve actors, and set in mid-twentieth century Middle America, the play infuses the quaint relationships and familiar irksomeness of small town life with the unsettling big issues that gnaw at the psyche from underneath.

I interviewed Whitaker about the production on Halloween. The segment was broadcast on KCSB-FM [91.9 Santa Barbara or streaming on web www.kcsb.org] on Monday Nov. 17, 7am on DirecTalk, a spoken word feature of The Classical Now. 

Boxtales Theatre Co. Interview 11-4-2014

Boxtales Theatre 20th Anniversary Festival

Boxtales - 'Hero Twins' from the Popul Vuh

Boxtales – ‘Hero Twins’ from the Popul Vuh

Boxtales Theatre Company is unique in a number of ways. First, they perform only original works based on mythology and folk stories. Second, their physical approach combines mime, acrobatics, juggling, dance, Brazilian capoeira, and live music. Next are the masks and puppetry, strange and wonderful artifacts constructed especially for the troupe. Finally, their pared-down approach balances the spectacle of theater with the intimacy of storytelling. Although based in Santa Barbara, Boxtales is in fact a touring professional company, serving surrounding cities, the Bay Area and even Olympia, Washington.

In celebration of their 20th anniversary, Boxtales will return to the Lobero Theatre to stage four newly upgraded shows from their repertory this weekend: Prince Rama and the Monkey King, The Odyssey, Leyendas De Duende: Magical Tales from Latin America, and B’Rer Rabbit and Other Trickster Tales. I recently caught up with Andrews, and company principals Matthew Tavianini and Marie Ponce to discuss the big milestone.

Django Reinhardt Festival All-Stars at the Lobero 11-11-14

Groovin’ to that French-Gypsy Swing

“Jazz Manouche” stars, straight from NY festival, will light-up the Lobero in Santa Barbara debut. Nov 11, 8pm

By Joseph Miller
Dorado Schmitt

Dorado Schmitt

When Jazz at the Lobero brings French guitarist and violinist Dorado Schmitt to the stage next week the occasion will mean irresistible swing and supremely melodic improvisation by the legendary string man and the rest of his quintet. Of course, swinging and ‘singing’ are marks of any good jazz artist. But Schmitt’s “Gypsy jazz” spells more—a living extension of the European continental jazz of Django Reinhardt dating back to the 1930s. Guitarist Reinhardt’s own genius was ignited by the sounds of American trumpeter Louis Armstrong, which then found expression through the French “Musette” café music and the traditional Roma sensibility of his roots. Quintette du Hot Club de France, headlined by Reinhardt and violinist Stéphane Grappelli, became an international sensation, with Grappelli and Reinhardt gaining the approbation, and sometimes sharing the stage, with American legends like Armstrong. The most prominent exponent of America’s new music in the Europe of his time, Reinhardt blasted preconceptions about the guitar, and made records that powerfully influenced modern guitarists from Jimi Hendrix to George Benson.

Schmitt, like Reinhardt, is of Romani stock. Born four years after the death of the latter, he came of age learning the rock guitar licks of Carlos Santana and Hendrix, until his father made the suggestion, “Listen to Django, and you will understand.” Today, sporting a Clark Gable pencil mustache—like Django—Schmitt looks as if he’s magically materialized from the frames of an old Hollywood romance.

And yet, according to accordion player Ludovic Beier, Schmitt’s approach subtly incorporates his rock ‘n roll past. “All that influence opened his playing to do a lot of things inside the Gypsy jazz, which is very important—to open the music—because Django Reinhardt is one genius and there will never be another one,” Beier told me by phone from a tour stop in Chicago. “So it’s very important for artists today that they add a personality inside their tribute to Django.”

Alongside Schmitt and Beier, Django Festival All-Stars includes violinist Pierre Blanchard, rhythm guitarist Francko Mehrstein, and Xavier Nikq on double bass. Named for the annual Gypsy jazz celebration at Birdland Club in New York City, which marks its fifteenth anniversary this week, the ensemble’s Santa Barbara debut couldn’t be better timed—radiant in the afterglow of the Django Festival while priming for a performance at the San Francisco Jazz Center. Expect uncontrollable toe-tapping. “That’s why I think it’s so popular,” Beier explained. “You have very catchy romantic melodies that can break your heart, but in the concert you also have very fast virtuosity in the sound, so you can switch from one mood to the other very fast, and I think this is something very interesting.”

Jake Shimabukuro interview, Oct. 2014

While His Ukulele Laughs

Ukulele genius Jake Shimabukuro returns to Campbell Hall, Thursday Oct 23, 8pm

Presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures

“Music is not just the universal language, but it’s the language of the universe. It is the language of human emotion – and whether you play an instrument or not, you communicate in this language every day. Music is not heard, it is felt. Music is in a smile, a hand on the shoulder, a pat on the back, a gentle kiss on the forehead. It’s in the way we treat people, help a friend, love our family. Music is everywhere.”  

Jake Shimabukuro

Jake Shimabukuro, credit Adam Jung

Jake Shimabukuro, credit Adam Jung

An aura of inherent boyishness infuses ukulele star Jake Shimabukuro: the gee-whiz adventurousness of an extreme skateboarder, game to go for the impossible, coupled with a disarming humility and genuineness that wonders at his skyrocketed popularity. The Hawaiian resident, Japanese-American by birth, shuns sophisticated framings of his virtuosity, insisting that the essence of music is the communication of feelings, and that the ukulele is essentially a child’s voice. Since the age of four he has regarded the seeming limitations of four strings and two octaves as an attractive challenge rather than a deterrent, just itching for defiance. Shimabukuro is a rebel, but a rebel with causes that reach beyond his own career, and even the immeasurable extension of the ukulele universe. His non-profit Four Strings Foundation is picking up where under-funded public music education is failing, providing ukuleles, materials and training to teachers nationwide. The master performer and string wizard, renowned for his jaw-dropping covers of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” and “Bohemian Rhapsody,” returns to Campbell Hall by popular demand, after his hit Arts & Lectures show in 2011. Shimabukuro took a few minutes out of his crammed “Uke Nations” tour to field a few questions from the Independent.

Continue reading →

Joshua Bell interview, Oct 17, 2014

Violinist Joshua Bell and pianist Alessio Bax in Recital

Presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures

Granada Theatre, Tuesday Oct 28, 7pm

“The highest praise you could give to a composer like Bach was to take and make your own arrangement; it was sort of an homage to that composer and to his work. And so it wasn’t considered sacrilegious to do something like that. It’s only recently, I think in the past 50 years, that there’s been this hesitance to alter music, with this quest for “authenticity” reigning supreme.”     Joshua Bell

With next week’s performance by Joshua Bell, Santa Barbara will have twice hosted the renowned violinist in a span of only seven months. But I don’t think anybody is getting tired of him anytime soon. For one, he’s Joshua Bell, after all! And two, the concerts show very different sides of his artistry. Last March he came here with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields Orchestra (courtesy of CAMA), whereas Tuesday he will play an intimate recital with Italian pianist Alessio Bax (courtesy of UCSB Arts & Lectures). Despite being only 46 years young, the American violinist and conductor has recorded critically acclaimed albums for nearly three decades. Bell has served as Music Director for the Academy of St Martin in the Fields since 2011—the first person after founder Sir Neville Marriner to hold that position in the 55 year-old ensemble. Continue reading →

Camerata Pacifica 25th Anniversary Season Opener

The Today and Tomorrow of Chamber Music

Composer John Harbison present for premiere of “String Trio”on Sept. 12 at Hahn Hall
John Harbison and members of Camerata Pacifica during recording session January 2014

John Harbison and members of Camerata Pacifica during recording session January 2014

Triangles have fascinating regularities. It doesn’t matter how unequal the sides, the altitudes always meet at a point, and so do the perpendicular bisectors. However, if the triangle is made up of violin, viola and cello, there is no such automatic balance. The string trio is such a daunting compositional form—presumably for the difficulty of defining harmony with relatively lean instrumentation— that American composer John Harbison, now in his seventies, only just completed his first and only. The generically titled String Trio was doubly-celebrated by Camerata Pacifica on Friday night: in a world premiere performance, and as the leading work on their brand new all-Harbison CD. The season opener, a twenty-fifth anniversary event for the acclaimed chamber group, also included Mozart’s charming Flute Quartet No. 1 in D Major and Schubert’s epic Piano Trio No. 2 in E-Flat Major.

The evening was, in fact, a kind of epitome of what the Camerata experience is all about: the solid presence of core principal players; new visiting artists of renown culled from an international roster; treasured compositions from the European canon; and a forward-leaning faith in the infinite possibilities of tomorrow’s music. The occasion opened aptly with the featured flute of founder and artistic director Adrian Spence, who reminded the audience that the inspiration for Camerata took shape during his mid-twenties while he moonlighted at a futon shop. Since then, the group has become a professional and artistic model for what twenty-first century chamber music is all about. The Mozart also introduced new faces: Armenian-born violinist Movses Pogossian, a veteran chamber musician who is passionate about new music; and New York-based cellist Raman Ramakrishnan, whose credentials include Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble. Principal violist Richard Yongjae O’Neill completed the foursome.

The meticulously crafted and mesmerizing String Trio seems already destined for rank with the masterpieces of the twenty-first century. Harbison, present at the premiere, took the stage in his signature plaid shirt and jeans—looking more the part of a Vermont maple farmer than Pulitzer Prize-winning composer—and made the case that his Trio, like most serious music, deserves, perhaps requires, repeated listening. Yet what followed was accessible, and felt effortlessly organic in its unity, bursting with the spirit of spontaneity. Each of the six movements is distinct: an alteration of aggression and repose in the first; a dialogue with silence in the second; a fractured waltz in the third; the jazz-and-folk-infused fourth, etc. Principal cellist Ani Aznavoorian joined Pogossian and O’Neill for this impressive premiere.

No Camerata Pacifica anniversary would be complete without a representative reminder of the stellar keyboardists that have graced so many performances. Principle pianist Warren Jones was joined by Pogossian and Ramakrishnan for a fiery rendering of the Schubert.

 

Gavotte 1 from Cello Suite V – J.S. Bach

Four years ago, Sept. 11, 2010, I decided to take up classical guitar, thanks to the inspiration of violist, Rachel Galvin, who teamed-up with me for a presentation on Bach’s Cello Suites at the Institute of World Culture. It was a sudden decision, and I’ve stuck with it. Old dogs CAN learn new tricks. I was 49 when I started. I purchased the Yamaha G-231 twenty-eight years earlier, with a strong desire to learn classical guitar. But initial attempts were too frustrating. I thought mistakenly for nearly 3 decades, “Oh well. Not for me. Too bad.” But the Yamaha waited . . . and waited . . . and pounced like a puma.
Much thanks goes to a dedicated guitarist and excellent instructor, Mike Witt, who gave me more than two years of solid instruction, and nurtured my confidence.  

Giving the Bible a Break from the Fact-Checkers

What Henry David Thoreau Taught Me About Respecting Mythology

There is a pass between the San Bernardino Mountains on the north and the San Jacinto Mountains to the south where Highway 10 connects Riverside with Palm Desert. In this nowhere zone rests the tiny town of Cabazon, gateway to the desert, and the site for some very peculiar giants. As my biology-savvy wife often reminds me, life tends to spawn in transition zones. But she didn’t have in mind dinosaurs.

Roadside attractions attract, so we pulled off when we saw a giant white Apatosaurus and a Tyrannosaurus Rex. What exactly were these concrete dinosaurs doing in Cabazon? Was this an old dig site? Were fossilized dinosaur tracks preserved in mud somewhere? Walking up to the Apatosaurus we quickly discovered it is actually hollow—a reptilian Trojan horse housing a gift shop. We climbed the stairwell leg, and found ourselves in the belly of a well-lit space, stocked with rubber dinosaur models, toy plastic weaponry, posters, puzzles and trinkets. It didn’t take very long, however, glancing at the wall displays, to figure out what was really going on: this roadside stop is not the product of science, but of theology. The Cabazon dinosaur park, dubbed The World’s Biggest Dinosaurs Museum, is a “young earth” propaganda post, a science-seeming zone for pressing travelers with opinions about creationism and a 6,000 year-old earth. Continue reading →