When the Santa Barbara Symphony launched its current season last month, to the epic tune of Beethoven’s Ninth, multiple choral groups mega-bolstered the onstage population to around 200. A different kind of numbers game is at work with the Symphony’s intriguing November program, Saturday night and Sunday afternoon, November 18 and 19, at The Granada Theatre. This time out, the Symphony proper will be joined by the young crossover sensation Time for Three, an unorthodox trio setting featuring violinists Nicholas “Nick” Kendall and Charles Yang and double bassist Ranaan Meyer. And did we mention that all three also sing?
For a taste of what the trio is about, proceed to last year’s album Letters for the Future (Deutsche Grammophon), featuring the piece Contact by composer Kevin Puts, recently hailed for his opera The Hours. (Listen to Contact here ).
The SBS program will lend a special spotlight to Puts’s Contact, partly in collusion with an adventurous project known as The California Festival: A Celebration of New Music. Launched by conductor-composer Esa-Pekka Salonen and focusing on music written in the past five years, the festival involves such prominent California music organizations as the Salonen-led San Francisco Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Diego Symphony, and the Ojai Music Festival.