The Santa Barbara Symphony’s February program — which they call “Transformation,” after the featured work — will consist of three pieces that dramatically demonstrate what Hindemith called “symphonic metamorphoses,” or what Strauss and Schoenberg called “Verklärung/Transfiguration,” and often appears as a set of variations.

Ted Nash plays his saxophone.
Ted Nash Credit: Courtesy photo
Natasha Kislenko sits at piano.
Natasha Kislenko Credit: Courtesy photo

The program, conducted by the symphony’s Music and Artistic Director Nir Kabaretti will be played twice: at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 18 and 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 19, both in the Granada Theater.

Guest artists will include pianist Natasha Kislenko, saxophonist and composer Ted Nash, and the Josh Nelson Trio.

The program is made up of four works: Erno von Dohnányi‘s “Variations on a Nursery Tune for Piano & Orchestra, Opus 25” (1914); Nash’s “Transformation” (World Premiere of Nash’s extended orchestrations); Richard Strauss‘ “Tod und Verklärung/Death and Transfiguration, Opus 24” (1889); and Maurice Ravel‘s ballet “Boléro” (1928).

Kislenko will be the soloist in the Dohnányi; Nash on the saxophone, and the Josh Nelson Trio will join the symphony for Nash’s “Transformation,” giving a concerto grosso aura to the performance.

The odd man out would seem to be the Strauss, in that the “Transfiguration” of the title refers not to the form of the work, but to the subject, the transfiguration of the soul after death, as Saint Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians:

“Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. [15:51-52]” — that kind of thing.

Jazz is, anyway, all about transformations — is the very nature of the beast — and, in its characteristic form, is largely improvisational. This suggests that it makes a bad fit with classical music, which works off a fixed, written-down score, with improvisations, when they occur, confined to the space allotted to them by the composer.

Still, it is possible for music to sound like jazz, with exotic chord changes, strong syncopations, employment of certain instruments, and so on, without having a single improvised passage.

Take the beautiful ballet “Original Sin” (1960) by the late John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Itself a transformation of Darius Milhaud‘s famous ballet “La création du monde, Opus 81” (1923).

“Original Sin” begins with what amounts to a direct quotation of the Milhaud (the first movement is called “Creation of the World & Creation of Adam”), and then sails off into a lightly swinging enumeration of the first animals and people. It sounds like improvisation, yet Lewis composed every note and wrote it down: it stays the same note in every performance. 

In 2021, the actress and jazz-aficionado Glenn Close collaborated with the remarkable jazz composer and saxophoist, Ted Nash (co-founder of the New York-based nonprofit Composers Collective, and long-standing member of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis) to produce the show “Transformation: Personal Stories of Change, Acceptance, and Evolution.”

Nash composed the music, while Close found pertinent texts and stories about transformative experiences she could narrate to “inspire, and basically comfort our audience.” The Jazz at Lincoln Center live show was canceled because of COVID, but a CD was released in 2021.

“Nash, on solo saxophone, joined by the Los Angeles-based Josh Nelson Trio, will perform his new version of ‘Transformation’ with the symphony, including two new pieces, and the world premiere of Nash’s extensive orchestrations,” according to a symphony press release.

“It is a tremendous honor to make music with such a high caliber musician like Ted – a close collaborator of Wynton Marsalis and a leading player in the world-class Jazz at Lincoln Center Big Band,” said Kabaretti.

“When Ted told me about his ‘Transformation’ project and I had a chance to listen to the show,  I asked him if he would transform this project for the classical concert hall,” Kabaretti said. “He graciously agree, and we are thrilled to be the ones to share this world premiere with you.”

Tickets to the concert “Transformation” are $35, $55, $80, $115, and $175. They can be purchased in person at the Granada box office, 1330 State St., by phone at 805-898-9386 or 805-899-2222, or online at https://ticketing.granadasb.org/16750.