ON the Beat | The Musical Year That Was, and Almost Wasn’t

This edition of ON the Beat was originally emailed to subscribers on December 22, 2022. To receive Josef Woodard’s music newsletter in your inbox each Thursday, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.

Live music’s prospects began grimly in the first weeks of 2022. In the fall of 2021, high hopes for the return of concert/club action — that which many of us thrive on and even live for — were raised and then dashed. Call it being “Delta-downed.” And yet, after a depressingly fallow January, live music more or less roared back to life in Santa Barbara, reminding us of what we had missed.

Some of the most sublime moments I experienced this past year came with my being granted audience with special solo keyboard concerts. Luminous and contemporary-minded pianist Conor Hanick officially made the 805 safe for German composer Hans Otte’s The Book of Sounds, a legendary and mesmerizing mosaic which Hanick played both as a highlight of the Ojai Music Festival and then as the launch of the Music Academy of the West’s new “Mariposa Series,” in the inspired space that is Hahn Hall. That same blessed venue provided a perfect ambience for possibly my own musical highlight of the year, when French harpsichordist Jean Rondeau gave us the full and authentic measure of JS Bach’s Goldberg Variations, presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures.

Jazz offerings in town were once again and rerun-ish, with highlights both grand and intimate: annual visitor Wynton Marsalis brought out his polished but dogmatically staid Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra at the Granada early in the year, and wondrous vocalist Kate McGarry and her partner/guitarist Keith Ganz scored a coup with an intimate encounter at a memorable house concert this fall.

One encouraging sign of music’s re-emergence came to pass up at the Santa Barbara Bowl. A heftier-than-usual concert roster included the friendly hometown hero’s return of Jack Johnson and band, in a two-nighter which felt like a re-coming-out. The Bowl also boasted one of its all-too-rare classical concerts in June, a Beethoven’s Fifth-equipped orchestral blowout celebrating the Music Academy of the West’s milestone 75th anniversary.