Sometimes, the sudden and powerful presence of a cultural force before us can alert us to its earlier absence: call it the “we didn't know what we were missing” syndrome. A recent case in point: the weekend that Kurt Weill sprang to life at the Granada Theatre. We now recognize that, although Santa Barbara boasts many artistic riches, we have been Weill-deprived.
Specifically, the Portland-based dynamo vocalist Storm Large, broadly acknowledged as a Weill-ian champion, put her indelible and raucous stamp on the Weill/Bertolt Brecht masterpiece from the 1933 The Seven Deadly Sins, as the centerpiece of the most adventurous concert in the Santa Barbara Symphony season.
The concert’s first half was admirably mostly devoted to the work of Black composers, living and dead — Jesse Montgomery and William Grant Still, respectively — and a savory appetizer of an opener in Jacques Ibert’s “Divertissement.” Still’s compendium of charming miniatures warmly affirms Black heritage, while Montgomery, one of the strongest voices among younger Black composers today, asserts an infectious rhythmic tug and lyrical harmonic palette with her 2006 piece “Strum,” originally for string quartet and here expanded for string orchestra.