ON the Beat | Season’s Gazings, Santa Barbara’s Live Music Returns in Fuller Force

What a difference a year makes. As music fans leaned into the coming concert season around this time last year, a wary sense of hope hung in the air. The COVID-fueled moratorium on live music was lifting and marquees and concert seasons were a buzz again, albeit with strict masking policies and vaccine border patrols in place.

On one celebratory weekend last September, locally linked stars aligned when Toad the Wet Sprocket pulled a two-nighter at the Lobero and Jackson Browne put another notch on his decades-deep Santa Barbara Bowl history. In Santa Barbara’s rich and regular classical music scene, institutions began rousing from their slumber and the formidable Ojai Music Festival rolled up its sleeves and unveiled an inspiring, John Adams–directed 75th anniversary feast last September (nudged into the “safe zone” from its normal June slot).

On the multi-genre front, the mighty cultural force/source of UCSB Arts & Lectures (A&L) sprang more fully into live action. Generally, there was a heady if cautious renewal atmosphere for live music in town. Of course, the buzz suffered a mid-season chill when the Omicron variant rained on the parade in January, before music life resumed — again.