The recent transition from November into December brought The Calder and Kronos String Quartets to our fair city, and an eclectic potpourri of music. November 30th, the Calders joined forces with Camerata Pacifica’s Kristin Lee, Jason Uyeyama, Ani Aznavoorian and Richard O’Neill to perform a spirited Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20 by Mendelssohn, and a pair of quartets by Beethoven and Anton Aransky, all part of CamPac’s 2018-19 season intriguingly titled “Why Beethoven.” Equally intriguing was the December 3rd and 4th visit by the Kronos Quartet, presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures which began with founder/violinist David Harrington’s “listening party” at the Santa Barbara Wine Collective in Santa B’s Funk Zone. Mr. Harrington played excerpts from and discussed a wide variety of music as a sort of guide to what makes him and Kronos tick, from folk and world to Hendrix. The following evening the quartet took the stage at Campbell Hall for “Music for Change – The Banned Countries,” their response to Trump’s 2017 executive order limiting travel to the US from seven Muslim-majority countries. It featured music from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen and more, and for the last twenty minutes or so they were joined by the glorious voice and presence of Persian (Iranian) singer Masha Vadat. The concert proved to be a fascinating journey to cultures and places far from Santa Barbara with a soundtrack based on sources as varied as Syrian folk-pop, Arab rock and a Lebanese Easter Hymn, all of it turned into string quartet music as only Kronos can. There were gongs, percussion and some ambient sounds, the whole thing weaving a spellbinding tapestry of auditory delights.
