Orchestral Ode to Our Santa Barbara Roots

In my decades of appreciating and covering concerts by the Santa Barbara Symphony, I’ve never had such a strong sense of Santa Barbara-ness as with last weekend’s experience at the Granada Theatre. The cause for civic pride came in the form of Santa Barbara composer Cody Westheimer’s world premiere, Wisdom of the Water, Earth, Sky. As extra-musical stimuli, Westheimer structured his six-movement piece around Chumash mythology, narrated by elder Ernestine Ygnacio-DeSoto and Marianne Para, and with a stunning filmic tapestry showcasing Santa Barbara’s natural splendor and accentuating a strong environmental theme.

Westheimer, who played in the Santa Barbara youth symphony and had his music performed by the orchestra at age 17, is a well-established film/TV composer by trade and by day, and his lush, attractive new orchestral score projects a certain “film music” atmosphere. Regrettably, popcorn was not allowed in the theater.

In a sense, this is literally film music, serving its intended illustrative, subservient role beautifully. Majestic drone shots of the region’s unspoiled beauty, from sea to peaks, blend in with squirrel’s eye-view oak tree-scampering shots and other footage linked to Chumash animist themes in which deer, dolphins and red-tailed hawks are among the metaphorical protagonists.