The Santa Barbara Symphony will round off its 2023-24 season with a program they call Rhapsody in Blue @ 100: Jazz Comes to The Symphony, in which the celebrated jazz pianist and composer Marcus Roberts will be the soloist in George Gershwin‘s irreplaceable “Rhapsody in Blue,” (1924), which has now been making Americans happy and proud for 100 years.
Roberts and his trio will also perform his Gershwin-inspired “Rhapsody in D,” and Maestro Nir Kabaretti will lead the orchestra in a performance of Charles Ives‘ “Symphony No. 2” (1897-1902).
Gershwin’s three great “classical” works — “Rhapsody in Blue,” “Concerto in F,” and “An American in Paris” — also evoke, unmistakably, the dominant visual style of the age, “Arts décoratifs,” more popularly known as Art Deco.
The music seems to rise out of the art. No more perfect expression of the American zeitgeist in the 1920s exists anywhere than “Rhapsody in Blue,” which I have loved since sixth grade. It was then that I discovered Oscar Levant‘s recording of “Rhapsody in Blue,” and his performance of it (he was a boyhood friend of the Gershwins) in the 1945 Gershwin biopic, also called “Rhapsody in Blue,” which I watched on television about that time.
It was a pivotal moment in my development as an American music lover — meaning both a lover of American music, and a music lover who is an American.
Marcus Roberts is phenomenal. With his total mastery of both the piano and the jazz idiom, he is a paid-up member of that exclusive cadre of jazz pianists that includes John Lewis, Ahmad Jamal, Erroll Garner, and not many others.
However far afield he may range in his explorations, he remains lyrical at his core.
Seventy years after his death, Charles Ives remains a controversial figure among American composers.
Some hail the Cranky Yankee as the founding father of American contemporary music; others find him irritating in the extreme.
The “Second Symphony” is his magnum opus, both in its length and in its wealth of ideas. For most of its running time, the “Second” is all but indistinguishable from the nationalistic symphonies of Roy Harris or George Antheil.
The slow parts are lushly romantic; the allegros are folksy and catchy. Every once in awhile, however, a chunk of a hymn, or a patriotic ditty (“Columbia the Gem of the Ocean” was a special favorite of the composer), will suddenly pop out of the background and threaten to make off with the whole piece.
Some find this cheeky and delightful, others aren’t so sure. But there is no doubt that Ives is here to stay.
Rhapsody in Blue @ 100 will be performed twice: at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, May 18, and 3 p.m. Sunday, May 19, both in the Granada Theatre, 1330 State St., Santa Barbara.
Tickets to this concert are $35-$175; they can be purchased in person at the Granada Ticket Office, 1330 State St., Ste. 102, by phone at 805-898-9836, or online at https://ticketing.granadasb.org/17849.