Trill Seeker

It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s a flutist. It’s Adrian Spence, fearless director of the Camerata Pacifica, kicking off the group’s 10-year anniversary by skydiving to a preconcert reception on the lawn in front of the Santa Barbara City College’s Garvin Theatre.

The landing takes place at 6 tonight. Music will follow, of course, opening a season of chamber music of, no doubt, impressive character, if the past decade has taught us anything.

It sounds like an audacious publicity gimmick, and--well--it is. But the gesture is part and parcel of Spence’s general plan to introduce lightness and entertainment to the business of presenting classical music to the public.

His easygoing, user-friendly approach, including breezy, spoken program notes during performances has, in fact, accounted for part of the organization’s success. But more important, the musical caliber has been impressively high. The expanded season, with concerts in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, will feature repertoire from the “first 10 years” of the group’s history.

This weekend’s program includes music of Bach, Purcell, Haydn and Mendelssohn. More news, musical and aerial, to come.

DETAILS

Camerata Pacifica, tonight, Fe Bland Forum, Santa Barbara City College, 721 Cliff Drive, Santa Barbara; Saturday at Meister Hall, Temple Beth Torah, 7620 Foothill Road, Ventura; and Sunday at Forum Theatre, Civic Arts Plaza, 2100 Thousand Oaks Blvd., Thousand Oaks. All concerts start at 8 p.m.; 961-0571 or (800) 557-BACH.

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Jazz Festival, Continued: Last year, the Santa Barbara Jazz Festival celebrated its own 10th anniversary with a major shift. A new owner/director, pianist Peter Clark, promised to buff up the festival’s sagging reputation and bring it to new heights. He did that last year, bringing Dave Brubeck to town. This year’s model grows further, expanding to a weeklong event instead of the customary weekend on the beach.

The festival kicks off next Monday at SohO and includes concerts at the Lobero Theatre, leading up to the main weekend, Sept. 24-26, at the village-like Ledbetter Beach stage, where all the action took place last year. There, the lineup includes Tito Puente, Lalo Schifrin, Eliades Ochoa (from Buena Vista Social Club), Mose Allison, Les McCann and many others.

On Wednesday at the Lobero, jazz talents from Russia will be featured, including pianist Igor Brill and the Moskats, the tender teenaged group that was a hit of last year’s fest.

Among other things, this festival is well-stocked with guitarists of note, including mainstream legend Kenny Burrell (at the Lobero on Sept. 24) and a talent deserving wider recognition, Wayne Krantz (at SohO on Tuesday)

Headlining the Lobero Theatre concert Thursday is Mike Stern, one of the singular guitar voices of his generation. A veteran of a significant incarnation of the Miles Davis band, when Davis emerged from his self-imposed hiatus in the early ‘80s, Stern has developed into a strong figure in the narrow ranks of mid-career guitarists for whom blending jazz with rock, soul and other elements comes naturally.

A composer with an assured, recognizable voice, he has amassed an impressive discography on the Atlantic label, up to his new one, “Play,” featuring guest guitarists Bill Frisell and John Scofield, two other influential peers. When Stern appears in Santa Barbara, it will be with his current quartet, featuring longtime collaborators Lincoln Goines on bass and the powerhouse drummer Dennis Chambers, along with saxophonist Bob Malach.

k As heard earlier this year at Catalina’s Bar and Grill in Hollywood, this is a steamy, tightly integrated band. Of particular interest are Chambers’ casually virtuosic solos, which tend to involve intricate polyrhythms.

Stern spoke recently on the phone from his home in New York, between road trips--always between trips. Stern says of his bandmate, “Dennis has this amazingly home-grown approach and just shrugs it off--’Well, yeah, that’s just what it is.’ But meanwhile, it’s some incredibly complicated stuff. His time is so strong, he can pick a different groove to play over the top of something and his stuff does not move. So you’ve got to just stay with it, and he plays a different tune. It’s like Charles Ives, with two things going on at once.”

By this point, Stern’s sound, combines intricate bebop-tinged phrasing with bluesy string bends and rock riffs, all without blinking. How does a musician get to the point where a personal sound emerges?

“You get to it by listening and playing,” Stern said. “That’s how you learn any language, and then you develop your own ideas and your own voice. So much of it has to do with touch and time. Of course, in addition, it’s how you hear the sound in your head and get that through whatever instrument you choose.”

But as he points out, if your instrument of choice happens to be an electric guitar, finding your own sound can be cumbersome.

“Tenor [saxophone] players go nuts with mouthpieces and reeds. Guitar players go nuts with amplifiers. Guitar-playing is a lot more expensive and it weighs a lot more. You can throw your back out trying to find yourself.”

But all of it, he points out, is part of the process.

“You get to that any way you can,” he said. “If you’re crazy enough to stay with something like this, for as long as it takes, I think you just do it as much as it takes and love it enough to keep playing and listening, and developing your own voice. Eventually, it happens.”

For Stern, it has happened in a slow-brewing, natural way. If never a household name or a contender in the “smooth jazz” realm (a backhanded kudo), Stern is one of those players who help define what jazz guitar is about in the late ‘90s.

DETAILS

Santa Barbara Jazz Festival, Monday through Sept. 26 at SohO, the Lobero Theatre and Ledbetter Beach in Santa Barbara. Mike Stern, on Thursday from 7-10 p.m. at the Lobero Theater, 33 Canon Perdido St., in Santa Barbara. Festival info: 969-5038 or www.1andriasharborside.com.

Josef Woodard, who writes about art and music, can be reached by e-mail at joeinfo@aol.com