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When final we caught Cat Power in 2022 on the Lobero, a perfect room for her particular enigmatic charms, the distinctive artist born as Chan Marshall summoned up her signature moody mystique within the semi-dark. She slithered across the stage in a stressed, cat-like model and wielded two microphones for timbre-shifting impact. The setlist touched on Cat Power classics but in addition tapped her then-recent Covers album, lending her voice and vibe to songs by quite a lot of artists together with The Stones (the personally becoming “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”), The Pogues, Frank Ocean, and shutting with Johnny Mathis (“Wild is the Wind”).
As a lot as her unique music has its personal explicit expressive mojo, Cat Power possesses an impressed method with cowl songs. She’s as much as these interpretive tips in a extremely centered method on her latest undertaking with the wordy however self-descriptive title, Cat Power Sings Dylan: the 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert, the premise of the present tour bringing her again to the Lobero on Wednesday, March 6.
The attribute tough edges, unpredictable twists, and low vary of Marshall’s voice fantastically fits the famed Dylan present of old, airlifting that second in musical historical past right into a form of time-freezing and revitalizing relevance. She additionally heeds the historic zeitgeist of the live performance’s significance, switching from acoustic folky to electrical folk-rock mode — to the disapproval of his early folks purist followers.
But Dylan was by no means one to be boxed in by his personal fame or viewers expectations. Ditto, Cat Power. Any likelihood to catch her stay is one to be savored.
More CAT Powers
Coincidentally, one other scorching ticket merchandise on subsequent week’s music calendar, additionally within the cozy confines of the Lobero Theatre on Thursday, March 7, goes by one other feline nom de plume, Meow Meow. The Australian performer Melissa Madden Gray, thegifted and sly neo-cabaret artistknown as Meow Meow, has turn out to be a particular and critically acclaimed re-inventor of cabaret music, with tongue-in-cheek and cultural histories in thoughts.
With her present undertaking, headed to the Lobero courtesy of UCSB’s Arts & Lectures, a lot will be gleaned from one other wordy however apt live performance title, Sequins and Satire, Divas and Disruptors: The Wild Women of the Weimar Republic. If we reflexively consider the Weimar Republic space-time, in Germany in the course of the Twenties, because the heyday of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht (and as not too long ago flown again into the general public discussion board by way of TV’s Babylon Berlin), there may be extra to the story and family names. Expect an training when Meow Meow hits the stage.
Meow Meow, who has labored in lots of contexts and glowing evaluations within the New Yorker and lots of different publications that matter, has additionally discovered a pure alliance with the Portland, Oregonian kitsch dispensary Pink Martini and chief Thomas Lauderdale.
Serious Music at a Church Luncheon
Two weeks again, I used to be on responsibility to evaluate an interesting live performance by eminent and sometimes up to date music-specializing Los Angeleno pianist Vicki Ray, as a part of the long-standing “Piano Spheres” collection she helped to launch. Her program, “Nacht und Träume,” on the hip black field and hip hangout L.A. venue 2200 Art + Archives, created a mesmerizing thematic net of music based mostly on evening and desires, spinning off of Schubert’s title artwork tune and that includes dwelling composers and a centerpiece of John Cage’s pivotal ready piano work from 1944, The Perilous Night.
Ray could also be related to trendy manners and issues, having additionally taught for years at CalArts, labored with the EAR Unit and lots of different up to date associations, however can be a well-rounded classical pianist. Santa Barbara will get a lunch-timed style of the “other” aspect of her musical being on Monday, March 4, when the Trinity Episcopal Church’s “Noon Concerts” (really, 12:15-12:45 p.m.) options the pianist together with violinist Alyssa Park and cellist Evgeny Tonkha. The topic: Maurice Ravel’s 1914 Piano Trio in A minor.
The Episcopal church, a Historic Landmark in all its Gothic Revival splendor, has lengthy been a jewel of an area for stay music efficiency. Among my very own reminiscences on this area was an environmental-themed spatial work by the late, nice Pulitzer Prize–successful composer Henry Brant, and numerous organ recitals (Some of us lengthy for the revival of organ recitals right here, the home of Santa Barbara’s most interesting pipe organ. But we digress).
Next within the Noon Concert’s collection is a period-sensitive Handel-based efficiency on Friday, May 17, with soprano Melissa Givens, baroque oboist Stephen Hammer, baroque bassoonist Kennth Munday, and Thomas Joyce — the church’s ever-impressive organist — on harpsichord.
