Rebirth of a Festival

Well-dressed jazz fans, a few slouching media members and other important people were packed into Santa Barbara’s beachfront Andria’s Harborside restaurant for one happy hour this summer. They idly feasted on appetizers and free-flowing beverages, while Nate Birkey’s cool-toned trumpet cooed in the background. On the face of it, it was just another party, this one announcing the upcoming jazz festival.

On another level, the event had deeper resonance, this being the first year the city’s jazz festival was to be run by “one of us,” as new owner and director Peter Clark took over from founding director Jack Butefish.

This weekend’s edition of the Santa Barbara Jazz Festival, taking place on the sand at Leadbetter Beach, is the 10th annual affair, and that number itself is a milestone in the fragile jazz festival cosmos. More important, though, this is the year the festival enjoys a veritable rebirth.

For one thing, it’s the first festival in years with a bona fide jazz star as a headliner: renascent piano legend Dave Brubeck appears Saturday night, and the ever-popular Les McCann returns Sunday, with the commanding and increasingly renowned !Cubanismo! capping things off Sunday night. This festival is suddenly worth noticing.

A familiar face and an amiable character around town, Clark runs Andria’s Harborside with his wife, Dallas, and hunkers down in the wrap-around piano bar here a few nights a week. He has played a role in past festivals, as a musician in the City College big band, one of the regular highlights of festival programs over the years.

As a businessperson, Clark was adversely affected by the decision, a few years back, to move the festival--which took place on Labor Day weekend--to the beach near Stearn’s Wharf. At that point, Clark was part of chorus of discontented businesspeople who felt the festival sapped a built-in tourist crowd on one of the busiest weekends of the year.

At the behest of the city, the festival was moved to later in September last year, and returned to Leadbetter Beach. But that didn’t address the other problem over the last few years: the festival’s fickle relationship with the J-word.

Local jazz fans have voiced criticism and generally felt alienated from the festival’s resistance to programming actual jazz. Last year, the headliner was popular “smooth jazz” sax player Boney James, satisfying fans of that slick subdivision of jazz culture but perpetuating the festival’s sagging legacy among listeners of jazz per se, including Clark.

It wasn’t always thus. Founded by Butefish, who runs a Santa Monica-based company specializing in sports events, the festival kicked off promisingly with one of the last West Coast concert appearances of the late, great tenor saxophonist Stan Getz. Subsequent festivals have featured the likes of the respected Marcus Roberts, Cedar Walton, Airto and Flora Purim, John Pattitucci and many others.

In recent years, though, the festival began sullying its reputation by going soft on jazz. And that reputation required a changing of the guard.

Clark recalled that, in January, “out of the blue, Jack called me and said, ‘I’m selling the festival.’ I said ‘Let me think about it.’ I spoke to the mayor and Parks and Recreation and said, ‘What do you think about having an in-city jazz festival if I take it over? Can I count on your support?’ They were very excited, and said, ‘Oh, this is what this thing needs.’ We met with Jack and worked out a deal, and here we go.”

From the outset, Clark explained, “my immediate agenda was to get a big-name jazz person. I gave a wish list of several names to John and we were able to get Brubeck, which, to me, is tremendous.”

As it happens, Brubeck has a local connection in that his brother Henry, who died in 1985, taught music in Santa Barbara schools for 25 years. A Henry Brubeck scholarship fund is being launched by the festival this year.

The more famous Brubeck, who took America by storm in the ‘50s with such tunes as “Take Five” and his by-now standard composition “In Your Own Sweet Way,” is going stronger than ever at age 77. The last few years have seen him flourish, with several recent jazz projects on the Telarc label, the latest a new set of original tunes, “So What’s New?”

Outside the jazz purview, Brubeck, who studied with French composer Darius Milhaud at Mills College in the ‘40s, continues to compose classical works. Performances and recordings of that side of his musical life are also increasing.

Is he happy working both jazz and classical angles?

“I do need both,” he said on the phone from a tour stop in San Diego. “If I have to write and write and write, my piano technique goes down, from holding a pencil . . . You wish you were out on the road playing jazz and that you had never seen a sheet of manuscript paper. At that moment, it seems so much more satisfying to be a jazz musician.

“Then you play something great on the road as a jazz musician. You’ll never play it again. It’s gone forever, and then you think ‘Gee, I wish I could have written that down.’ It goes back and forth.”

In Santa Barbara, the Brubeck family link will continue, as the patriarch is joined by his sons, Danny on drums and Chris on trombone. Also in the band will be clarinetist Bill Smith, a member of Brubeck’s octet, dating to the ‘40s.

The official title of the festival has grown into the unwieldy Santa Barbara International Jazz Festival and World Music Beach Party. But the title contains truth in advertising and an indication of artistic intentions, as laid out by artistic director John McNally, who has been programming the festival for several years. The mix includes an emphasis on swing and blues on Friday’s schedule.

As Clark says, “We have trad jazz represented, three big bands, Latin jazz groups, straight-ahead jazz groups. I think it’s a really good mix.”

In fact, the festival’s secret weapon may be Sunday night’s set from Cubanismo. Led by trumpeter Jesus Alemany, the hot Cuban group, full of stunning ensemble precision and dynamic improvisational skill, has been tearing down houses and cultural barriers, and recently released the exciting album “Reincarnacion” on the Hannibal label.

More international flavor arrives this year in the form of the respected Russian big band led by octogenarian Oleg Lundstrem. Clark became acquainted with the Russian jazz scene this spring when he went on tour there, as the “first American jazz musician to go over there, alone, and play solely with Russian musicians.”

Through that link, Clark arranged to have Lundstrem’s band appear in Santa Barbara, in what will be his swan song tour, after landing in the Guiness Book of World Records for leading his band for 62 continuous years.

Lundstrem’s band will also perform at Moonlight on the Boulevard in the Valley on Monday, along with a combo of young Russians whom Clark has dubbed the Moscitos. Then, the entourage heads to Washington, D.C., before returning home.

On the home front of the tri-counties jazz scene, the festival will also feature the Estrada Bros., vocalist Jerome Smith, the Nate Birkey Quintet, Luis Munoz--just releasing his new CD, a follow-up to his well-received “Fruits of Eden”--and Clark himself, leading a trio and fronting a vocal group, the Santa Barbara Seven.

Veteran Les McCann is something of an honorary Santa Barbaran, having played here regularly and featuring the gifted trumpeter Jeff Elliott, Santa Barbara-born and bred, for the past 15 years, along with Santa Barbara guitarist Dave Zeiher. McCann has been slowing down since suffering a stroke onstage in Germany in 1985, but he adapts by relying more on his affable, soul-imbued vocal style, as heard in his rousing set at last year’s festival.

McCann’s newest album, coming out this week, is, in fact, a blast from the past. “How’s Your Mother?,” on the 32 Jazz label, is a surprisingly inspired concert date of his acoustic piano trio dating from 1967.

“I’m looking forward to this coming out,” McCann said, from his home in Van Nuys, “because so many people do ask for the acoustic sound and the trio sound, and I’m not able to do that kind of thing anymore. After having the stroke, my fingers went south on me. I’m now undergoing treatment for extreme carpal tunnel syndrome. But I don’t see that as ending my career or anything.”

No doubt McCann will grace the stage at Santa Barbara festivals to come. And the future of the festival is looking bright, even if its new owners are watching cautiously over the newly revitalized affair.

BE THERE

Santa Barbara International Jazz Festival and World Music Beach Party, Friday-Sunday at Leadbetter Beach. Friday 1-10 p.m., featuring Walter Wolfman Washington at 9:15; Saturday 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m., featuring Dave Brubeck at 9 p.m.; Sunday 11 a.m.-8 p.m., with Les McCann at 5:30 and Cubanismo at 7:15. Tickets are $8/person, $15/couple Friday; $13/person, $25/couple Saturday; $13/person, $30/couple Sunday; weekend passes $30/person. Reserved seating tickets are $13/person, $25/couple Friday; $20/person, $35/couple Saturday; $20/person, $35/couple Sunday; weekend pass $45. Children 5-12, $3; children under 5 free with paying adult. (800) 765-6255.