For seven years, National Drive Electric Week has inspired people to ditch the gas pumps and go electric. It includes more than 250 events across the nation; in Santa Cruz, there will be opportunities to gain first-hand experience in electric-vehicle test drive areas, along with the chance to talk with local electric vehicle owners and experts. There will also be electric bike displays, just in case you haven’t tried out the Jump bikes yet.
INFO: 1 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 8. Cooper St., Santa Cruz. mbeva.org. Free.
Art Seen
‘The Beauty Queen Of Leenane’
Fortysomething spinster Maureen Folan lives with her manipulative aging mother Mag in the provincial Irish town of Leenane. When a romantic encounter finally sparks Maureen’s hopes for an escape from her dreary existence, Mag’s interference sets in motion a chain of events that is as tragically funny as it is terrifying. Written in 1996, Beauty Queen is one part of a trilogy and was the first play from screenwriter Martin McDonagh, who’s best known for In Bruges and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
INFO: 2 and 7:30 p.m. Runs Wednesday, Sept. 5 through Sunday, Sept. 30. The Colligan Theater at the Tannery Arts Center. 1010 River St., Santa Cruz. 425-7506. jeweltheatre.net. $27-$50.
Saturday 9/8
Apple a Day Festival
Don’t be fooled by the date—according to the gloomy, cold and dry weather we’ve begun to see here, it’s pretty much fall. Of course that means pumpkin spice everything, while the apple gets overlooked this time of year. But at the Scotts Valley Farmers Market, apples will be the star of the show, with an apple scavenger hunt. The best apples of the year are ripe from September through October, and to preserve their tart, juicy taste, now is the time to make applesauce. Nothing quite says or smells like fall more than homemade applesauce, so join in the Scotts Valley Farmers Market demonstration on how to make it at home. Can’t make this one? Felton Farmers market will host the festival on Sept. 18.
INFO: 10 a.m. Applesauce Workshop. Scotts Valley Farmers Market. King’s Village Drive, Scotts Valley Community Center, Scotts Valley. santacruzfarmersmarket.org. Free.
Thursday 9/6
‘To Brahms with Love from the Cello of Pablo Casals’
To mark the 100th anniversary of renowned cellist Pablo Casals’ U.S. debut, Grammy-nominated cellist and conductor Amit Peled will use Casals’ own cello to perform To Brahms with Love. Peled maintains a growing conducting schedule while continuing a thriving solo career performing on the historic 1733 Gofriller Pablo Casals cello. Along with performing in some of the world’s best concert halls, Peled is passionate about making classical music more accessible for people of all ages, and has recently published a children’s book A Cello Named Pablo. This is the biggest event in the history of the Distinguished Artists Concert series, and is sure to see a large turnout, so get tickets early.
INFO: 7:30 p.m. Peace United Church, 900 High St., Santa Cruz. General admission, $35, senior $30, student: $12.50
Saturday 9/8 and Sunday 9/9
San Francisco Mime Troupe ‘Seeing Red’
The San Francisco Mime Troupe is premiering its 59th season with Seeing Red: A Time Traveling Musical. Bob, a former Obama voter, takes a chance on Donald J. Trump, the new guy promising change—an attractive candidate for her since she’s had nothing but misfortunes in the Obama era. But two years into Trump’s presidency, Bob’s still waiting to start winning. Then she travels back to a time when the Socialist Party was winning millions of American votes, and discovers that perhaps her views and those of the pesky progressive aren’t all that different.
INFO: 3 p.m. San Lorenzo Park. 137 Dakota Ave., Santa Cruz. (415) 285-1717. sfmt.org. Free, donations gladly accepted.
Heads-up fashion enthusiasts: Pivot: The Art of Fashion is making a return to Santa Cruz.
This time around, the Hall of Fashion runway show brings a new lineup of “surprising and unexpected artful fashion to delight and inspire.”
A night of performance fashion produced in collaboration with the R. Blitzer Gallery, the event features dozens of artists, including Chris Allen, IB Bayo, Ellen Brook, Kathleen Crocetti, Lisa Ford, Tobin W. Keller, Mariclare McKnight, Matthew Molcillo, the Great Morgani and more.
INFO: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 22. R. Blitzer Gallery, 2801 Mission St., Santa Cruz. $20-25/gen, $55/VIP. Information: pivot-artfashion.com.
WANT TO GO?
Go to santacruz.com/giveaways before 11 a.m. on Monday, Sept. 17 to find out how you could win a pair of tickets to the show.
Live music highlights for the week of September 5, 2018.
WEDNESDAY 9/5
REGGAE
MISAEL
Relief efforts continue in Puerto Rico, and its citizens are still struggling. That’s why it’s important to keep listening to what the people that call it home have to say, which is one of many reasons you might want to check out Misael at Moe’s Alley on Wednesday. He is famous as the lead singer of one of the island’s biggest reggae bands, Yerba Bruja. In addition to the handful of LPs his band has released, he’s also put out some solo material, and done some collaborations, all still in the vein of bilingual roots reggae. AARON CARNES
With a collective resume that includes work with Zoe Muth, Eli West and Donna the Buffalo, Western Centuries garners comparisons to legendary groups like the Band and the Flying Burrito Brothers. Purveyors of country music with heart, well-crafted lyrics, top-notch instrumentation and enough edge to appeal to hardcore roots enthusiasts, the band breathes fresh life into classic country and Western music, without losing what it is that attracts people to the music in the first place. As singer-songwriter and founding member of Old Crow Medicine Show Willie Watson put it, “What a relief! Country music is alive and well.” CAT JOHNSON
INFO: 7:30 p.m. Michael’s on Main, 2591 Main St., Soquel. $10. 479-9777.
FRIDAY 9/7
HIP HOP
SHORELINE MAFIA
Shoreline Mafia are no strangers to Santa Cruz, although these days when they play town they are selling out the main room in the Catalyst—a long way from their fledgling days only two years ago. Now the fearsome foursome recently signed to Atlantic Records and are ready to take their L.A. sound to the world. Because they’ve blown up so big, this Friday’s show will be a double feature. MAT WEIR
Pink Floyd is often remembered as one of the quintessential “album rock” bands. But let’s not forget that they were also a mind-blowing live band. They incorporated theatrics and lights, and created stunning sonic soundscapes that even their near-flawless records couldn’t capture. That’s why the goal of the San Francisco Pink Floyd tribute band House Of Floyd is to create not so much a “tribute” to the band as a fully immersive live Pink Floyd experience. They even create some of their own arrangements for these classic songs. AC
Banda is a style of brass and percussion music that has come to represent the Southern and Central states of Mexico. The boisterously romantic sound floats through a range of rancheras, boleros, cumbias and more. Banda Santa Maria is Salinas’ premiere banda group, and features an impressive group of over a dozen local musicians. MW
With a stage show that’s been described as the “essence of aloha,” singer-songwriter and 12-string slack key guitarist George Kahumoku Jr. is one of the most recognized and beloved ambassadors of Hawaiian music. Born in Kona on the Big Island, Kahumoku’s understanding of traditions—musical and otherwise—runs deep. A farmer, teacher and storyteller, Kahumoku shares his love of island life, humanity, music and the land in his music and on-stage. CJ
Comprising 11-time Grammy winner and Santana vocalist Tony Lindsay, blues guitar standout Chris Cain, Dewayne Pate, Deszon Claiborne, Glenn Walters and Eamonn Flynn, the Ray Charles Project is a Bay Area all-star outfit that pays tribute to the American legend in fine style. Spanning Charles’ repertoire—soul, blues, jazz vocals, gospel and more—the sextet keeps his spirit alive and swinging. CJ
In the McFerrin family, uncategorizable brilliance doesn’t fall far from the tree. The son of vocal wizard Bobby McFerrin, Taylor McFerrin is a polymathic multi-instrumentalist, beatboxer, vocalist, composer and producer who engineers slyly grooving tracks blending hip-hop and electronica, jazz, soul, and R&B. He’s been keeping company with a groove-centric jazz supergroup in recent months, recording and touring with keyboardist Robert Glasper, trumpeter Christian Scott, bassist Derrick Hodge and others in R+R=NOW, but this show is a solo date featuring McFerrin building tunes on his phalanx of keyboards. ANDREW GILBERT
INFO: 7 p.m. Kuumbwa Jazz, 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz. $26.25 adv/$31.50 door. 427-2227.
MONDAY 9/10
POST-ROCK
UNWED SAILOR
Back in the adventurous late ’90s indie rock era, Jonathan Ford was kicking around in bands Pedro the Lion and Roadside Monument, not feeling completely artistically satisfied. It was from this dissonance that he created Unwed Sailor, which is mostly instrumental, post-rock and highly emotive—not totally new territory among ’90s indie experimenters. But a few things stuck out about his project. One was its slippery diversity from album to album. It could be graceful and gorgeous, or lighthearted and cute; even grating and scary. Another more subtle element is Ford’s relentless pursuit to keep the music swirling around the bass. He continues to write and record experimental, ambient music that doesn’t quite jive with the standard post-rock stereotypes. AC
Star La’Moan, frontwoman for the local eclectic band Star La’Moan and the Kitchenettes (jazz, blues, all things New Orleans), likes to bring a box of wooden spoons, pots, pans and other kitchen implements to shows.
She’ll hand them out to members of the audience and encourage them to use them as percussion. At a recent show, she handed some spoons to two young boys. One was 8, the other was 11.
“Once I handed them the spoons, they went berserk—and they were great percussionists. They played all night long with us,” La’Moan says. “I think it’s really important to engage the audience. That’s the gift I think we give as performers.”
The band came together four years ago, while its members were working together in the kitchen at Kuumbwa Jazz Center. La’Moan had previously fronted Star La’Moan and the Deltoids, which started back in the early ’90s. She released one CD, Livin’ on the Edge, a little over a decade ago, and is hoping to have her first Kitchenettes CD out early next year. It’s tentatively titled Outta The Kitchen, Into the Streets.
“We march in. We go up and down the aisles. If we’re allowed to go outside, we do,” La’Moan says of the band’s shows. “We do everything from old timey standards to jazz, some R&B, some of my originals. They all fit with what I feel is the heart of New Orleans music. It’s everything and the kitchen sink, because that’s what our musical cuisine is.”
INFO: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 12. Michael’s on Main, 2591 S Main St., Soquel. $10. 479-9777.
Fiano is a white Italian grape that many people are not familiar with. It’s a high-quality grape used widely in Southern Italy, particularly in Campania. With its aromatic floral and honey notes and distinctly nutty flavor, it is gaining in popularity and achieving something of a renaissance.
Winemaker Barry Jackson embraces the Fiano grape by making a beautiful sparkling 2015 Fiano Brut Ultra ($45) under his Equinox label, and a still-wine Fiano under his Bartolo label.
With its vibrant flavors and spritzy bubbles, the fun and fabulous Equinox methode champenoise Sparkling Fiano is perfect for any celebration. I remember staying in the South of France with friends, and a splendid bottle of chilled Champagne was waiting for us as we entered their home. How delightful to celebrate the arrival of guests with a drop of bubbly.
Head to Equinox’s tasting room in the Swift Street Courtyard complex to try Jackson’s other sparkling wines—especially his classic 2001 Brut Reserve—he’s an ace at making them.
Equinox, 334C Ingalls St., Santa Cruz, 471-8608. equinoxwine.com.
Rogue Pye
I tasted some very delicious pies at a recent event in Aptos, all made by Rogue Pye. Around two dozen different kinds are available, including lamb curry, meat pye, chicken leek, chicken pot pie, and some veggie-centered ones such as cheese and onion and vegetable tikka masala. Owned by a couple from South Africa, Ed and Uandi Fordyce, Rogue’s pie crusts are made with real butter pastry and contain a plentiful filling. And for the Brits out there, Cornish pasty, sausage roll or a stout steak and mushroom pie are made, too. Rogue pyes are fully cooked and can be ordered online frozen. The Fordyces’ pies are in big demand—and they are turning them out like crazy and taking them to various events to sell. Try them at the Steel Bonnet Brewing Company in Scotts Valley from 4:30-8:30 p.m. on Sept. 7, and at the Capitola Art & Wine Festival on Sept. 8 and 9, and you can find a limited selection every day at East Cliff Brewing.
While I enjoy exploring the food scene, and often go out of my way to try new restaurants, pop-ups and food trucks, there’s nothing like the comfort of returning to a beloved tried-and-true eatery.
I love knowing what I’m going to order before I walk in the door. It’s so relaxing to remove the decision-making part of the dining experience and immediately ease into sweet anticipation of my meal, preferably with a beer or glass of wine in hand.
I used to feel this way about Mission Street BBQ. For six years, I’ve been able to order the tri-tip sandwich with confidence. There was never a care on my mind as I devoured my reliably delicious meal, smoke wafting up the back of my palate as I savored each tender slice smothered in spicy barbecue sauce. I have been known to say on visits with friends, “Get the tri-tip. You won’t regret it.”
But that phase of my life has come to an end. You think you know a place, and then one day you discover a secret menu item and it changes everything. 2018 is now the year of the Ribwich.
I feel like I’ve been living with my head in the sand when General Manager Mike Falco explains to me that the rib sandwich has been around for more than a decade at both Mission St. and Aptos St. BBQ, although it’s always been an off-menu item. “It’s definitely an underground thing. But for people who know about it, which is probably 20 percent of our customer base, that’s their go-to.”
Falco explains that they only have the rib sandwich three or four times a week, depending on their supply of ribs. “We take racks of ribs that go through a duel cooking process of smoking and then roasting in the oven. It really tenderizes them.”
Then they pop out the bones and lay the rib meat between soft ciabatta bread with their signature sauce. Softly crunching through the dark bark on the outside of the ribs and into a thick cut of tender, smoky rib meat is incredibly satisfying. In this sandwich, you get all of the enjoyment of ribs without all the work. Whether you’re a barbecue zealot or just very hungry, it will easily secure a place in your go-to menu.
Most kids who want to play an instrument will probably cut their teeth on their local school band. But where do they go later if they have ambitions beyond their high school jazz band? In Santa Cruz County, the answer is the Kuumbwa Jazz Honor Band.
The Honor Band program is in some ways an extension of Kuumbwa’s Summer Jazz Camp, which takes place over the course of two weeks in June. It’s a crash course in all things jazz, and open to a range of experience levels.
Then in September comes the Jazz Honor Band, which requires an audition. For the kids that make it, there’s a weekly rehearsal, as well as several performances that happen over the course of the school year.
The Honor Band bucks music-education conventions—in most school jazz bands, kids learn how to play in an ensemble setting, but here the emphasis is on improvised soloing. Young musicians need to have the basics down when they start, and chances are that by the end of the school year, they’ll have a much stronger grasp on how to create spontaneous melodies.
“Jazz is a lot of things, but ultimately the essence of it is improvised soloing. It’s an enormous skill,” says Terrel Eaton, who led the Honor Band from 2002 to 2007, and again from 2016 until this year. “These are kind of the stars from the individual high school bands getting to play with other kids that are just as good as them, as opposed to ‘I’m the star.’”
The Honor Band was started in the early ’90s when retired North Monterey district band teacher and Kuumbwa board member Phil Snyder noticed that the jazz organization’s board was putting a lot of emphasis on educational programs. He saw it as a chance to use his many decades of experience leading school bands, and give Santa Cruz County kids who were truly interested in jazz a place to learn at a higher level than they could in their schools.
“I knew they were always claiming that they were pushing jazz education, but they didn’t really have much going,” Snyder says. “I’m glad to see that it’s grown. It’s doing what they said they wanted it to do in the first place. It’s gotten bigger and better.”
The results are remarkable. The Honor Band has become a true talent factory, and many of its alumni have gone on to successful, innovative and downright fascinating careers in the music world—and beyond. Over the last couple years of writing music features and Love Your Local Band columns for GT, I began to notice that some of the musicians I was most intrigued by had been involved with Kuumbwa’s program at some point. One in particular that jumped out at me was Dillon Baiocchi, whose experimental project Hermano blew my mind. So I tracked a few of them down to ask them about what they’re doing now, and how they feel their experience in the Honor Band contributed to it.
Name: Ben Flocks
Age: 29
Instrument: Saxophone
Years in Honor Band: 2005-2007
Right now, Ben Flocks is between tour dates with the group Sammy Miller and the Congregation, a wide-ranging revue production in which he plays tenor sax. He’s been in the band for a couple years, and has toured nationally and internationally with them. In this band, jazz is only one piece of the musical puzzle.
“It’s a broad range. We play a lot of old American songs. There’s a lot of old folk songs and old jazz songs: Jelly Roll Morton, Scott Joplin, Duke Ellington. A lot of new music, too, that we arrange and compose ourselves,” Flocks says. “We have a lot of theatrical elements to our performances. There’s acting, there’s costumes, dancing, and we interact with the audience. That’s been a really fun project to be involved with.”
This gig came well over a decade after his experience with the Kuumbwa Jazz Honor Band in high school. First, he attended the Brubeck Institute in Stockton for two years, then moved to New York, where he finished his education at the New School. While there, and for several years after, he gigged as much as he could.
In 2014, he released his first official album as bandleader, Battle Mountain. It’s steeped in jazz, with also some subtle, breezy Americana influences in the mix. The record got great reviews including 4.5 stars from All About Jazz and a positive write-up in the Los Angeles Times.
Even though he was living in New York by the time he made the album, he wanted to access his Santa Cruz roots for the record. So, he did the recording in California, and used musicians almost primarily from the area that he grew up with.
“It was inspired by Santa Cruz, and my experiences growing up in Bonny Doon up on a mountain,” Flocks says. “A lot of the songs are very open and introspective. They don’t necessarily reflect my experiences in New York, with the fast-paced lifestyle of living in the city. I’m more inspired by my time growing up in the country and by the beach. We play some folk songs, we play a bolero by the Buena Vista Social Club, all songs that you might hear in Santa Cruz when you’re walking on the beach or hanging at the Boardwalk.”
He considers his time with the Kuumbwa Jazz Honor Band a big inspiration. He says it was critical for him to have an opportunity to challenge himself, learn how to improvise better, and play with higher-caliber players. But just as important, says Flocks, was the opportunity he had to see unlimited shows at Kuumbwa for free, something you get to do when you make it into the Honor Band.
“I got to see the greatest musicians on the planet coming through Santa Cruz every week on Monday night and Thursday nights, and having the opportunity to learn from them by going to these shows, it was very cool,” Flocks says. “I feel really lucky to be able to play music and teach music, and do what I do for a living. It’s a blast. I get to travel and see the world and inspire young musicians to play music.”
Name: Nick Bianchini
Age: 28
Instrument: Trumpet
Years in Honor Band: 2005-2008
Nick Bianchini is one of the youngest high school band teachers in the county. Since 2015, he’s been teaching at Harbor High and Branciforte Middle School, and he couldn’t be more excited about the opportunity.
“Growing up, most people talk about teaching as being a back-up plan for their music careers if they fail,” Bianchini says. “It was a choice for me to go into this direction.”
It hasn’t always been easy. The program—through no fault of the previous band director, Bianchini says—wasn’t doing too great when he got there. But in a few short years, he’s already grown the band in numbers, and made an impression in competition—including the Anaheim Heritage Festival last year at the Rose Center Theater, where they got a silver rating, meaning they were in the top 20 percent of high school bands in the country.
“I’ve been working hard at building the program up. It’s been a difficult process,” Bianchini says. “I think most of the kids that do jazz band at Harbor have never really experienced jazz.”
Before jumping into the world of teaching, Bianchini lived in L.A. for a while, where he played the trumpet for bands in a number of different genres, including jazz, funk and reggae. One band, Tribal Seeds, had some breakout success, and he gigged up and down California several times with them.
“Things were going really well in Los Angeles. I had a lot of connections. I would say it was pretty successful,” Bianchini says. “I felt a need to come back to Santa Cruz and to change my direction as far as playing music goes. I fell in love with being able to teach and pass on all the knowledge that I learned in college, high school and the Kuumbwa Band, and give those opportunities to the kids now coming up. That gave me the same satisfaction and feelings that the performing did.”
When he first decided to move back to Santa Cruz, he didn’t have a teaching job lined up. Initially, he got a gig teaching “Hot Cross Buns” to second-graders—and loved it. Then the job at Harbor High opened up. He applied and got it.
Being has been trying to put some contemporary songs into the repertoire that the kids can relate to, including genres like Latin, salsa, funk and hip-hop. For instance, they play the popular electronic song “Say U Won’t” by Brasstracks.
“I’m trying to bridge the gap from what I grew up with in music and what I love about music, so that we’re not just playing classical music in band anymore,” Bianchini says. “We’re trying to move with the times and change with what’s really going on in music right now. That’s what’s made Harbor special, and made the program grow so much.”
By engaging the students with popular music, he’s been able to teach them more classical and jazz numbers.
“Now that they’re at a level where they can play it successfully, they’re finding that playing classical music is fun, too,” Bianchini says. “We’ve done great things with that.”
Name: Remy & Pascal Le Boeuf
Age: 32
Instrument: Saxophone (Remy), piano (Pascal)
Years played in Honor Band: 2001-2004
Just recently, Pascal Le Boeuf was nominated for a Grammy for best instrumental composition for the song “Alkaline” from the record Imaginist, a collaboration between his jazz group the Le Boeuf Brothers and contemporary classical ensemble the JACK Quartet.
“It felt wonderful to be recognized by the jazz community for a project I felt proud of. It brought together musicians from jazz and classical communities in a way that allowed them to speak their native languages and still have a conversation,” Pascal says.
The Le Boeuf Brothers now have four albums. The group is comprised of Pascal and his identical twin Remy Le Boeuf, who have been playing music together since they were kids, and who both went through the Kuumbwa Jazz Honor Band program.
Remy and Pascal have long been recognized as extraordinary talents in Santa Cruz, and since moving to New York they’ve been hailed as brilliant musicians by a number of publications, including the New York Times. And they give a lot of credit to their musical upbringing, which started with jamming together at an early age.
“I played a lot with Pascal on a regular basis. I had good teachers, and I was involved with good educational programs like the Kuumbwa Jazz Camp and the Kuumbwa Honor Band,” Remy says. “We were just in the right place to take advantage of all these excellent educational opportunities for young people in Santa Cruz.”
The brothers play jazz mixed with a number of other genres, including electronic, hip-hop, pop, and in the case of their last album, classical.
“Jazz is certainly our native musical language. It’s how we became fluent in music,” Pascal says. “Anyone in the jazz community will be able to understand how to converse in that language. Even now when I write for classical musicians, I still think primarily in the language of jazz—although it gets pretty blurry.”
They recall playing at Santa Cruz farmers markets as kids, where they’d give out their business card for prospective gigs—which they got. They even score free food at the markets by arranging deals with specific vendors to set up near them to increase foot traffic, and thus sales.
“I think by the time I graduated high school, so much of my identity was wrapped up in music,” says Remy. “It’s so much a part of who I was. I was and still am interested in a lot of non-musical things, but at that time in my life, music was what I was going to do.”
“We were born musicians,” says Pascal, “just following the free food.”
Name: Lucas Hahn
Age: 18
Instrument: Piano
Years played in Honor Band: 2012-2013
Lucas Hahn currently attends Columbia University in New York. He hasn’t declared a major yet, but he’s considering pre-med. He’s been back home this summer, and found a gig combining his two major passions: science and jazz. He’s working with neuroscientist and otolaryngology surgeon Dr. Charles Limb at UCSF, where they are analyzing the effects of improvisation on the brain of jazz musicians.
“Since we’re in the business of trying to assign more objective scientific reasoning and logic to jazz—which is pretty famously not logical or scientific—I’m trying to use my experience in both fields to think of new solutions,” Hahn says. “I definitely have an edge in that aspect. It’s been really valuable in the lab.”
It was in another program Hahn did after Kuumbwa, the SFJAZZ High School All Stars, that he met Limb.
“He was doing research on creativity, and used our band as a model,” Hahn says. “He would talk about creative jazz musicians, and we might play a piece to illustrate that.”
In March, Hahn looked up Limb and asked him if there were any projects he could participate in while he was home this summer. Limb offered him a spot as a summer intern for his study of improvisation called the UCSF Sound and Music Perception Lab. It was a perfect fit for what Hahn wanted to study.
“If you ask jazz musicians—or really any performer—what makes them creative, nobody can really give a scientific answer to that,” Hahn says. “It’s so very hard to quantify it in objective terms. Our goal is to kind of decode what exactly is happening to somebody like Keith Jarrett or Herbie Hancock. We want to know what allows them to be so creative [in a way] that most of the population cannot replicate.”
A simple explanation of the methodology involves studying the brain activity of a jazz musician as they are improvising, and then comparing it to control data, where the same musician is playing a piece that they’ve already memorized.
“Areas associated with language are more active during improvisation,” Hahn says. “The part of our brain that is associated with self-inhibition is kind of less active during improvisation. I think there’s a lot of interesting insight we can glean from not only a musical sense, but also broader-reaching implications. It also has to do with the feeling of ‘being in the zone’ that musicians and athletes or any other people that perform under pressure talk about.”
Hahn will continue his education after he’s finished working with Limb, but right now, he’s all in on his work with the study.
“Maybe there’s a way to harness that for other people besides the Chick Coreas of the world,” Hahn says. “There’s a lot that can be done with that information. Right now, we’re just trying to figure out exactly what’s going on in their heads.”
Name: Emily Intersimone
Age: 30
Instrument: Piano
Years played in Honor Band: 2004-2006
Emily Intersimone is using the skills she gained from jazz improvisation and the Kuumbwa Jazz Honor Band for a completely different kind of job: software engineer.
“For me there’s a link,” she says. “Both things involve having a certain amount of creativity, but within a set of rules. Let’s say you’re writing an arrangement and you know you want to land on a certain chord in a section, and you have this melody that you have to harmonize for four bars before that. So, there’s a number of choices that you have to make, but you have this ultimate destination. I see the same thing in programming.”
She has been living in New York City with this job for about a half a year. After graduating high school, she moved to Los Angeles to study jazz at UCLA, and then to New York to study jazz composition at New York University. There she recorded an album of her original pieces of songwriting as a class assignment.
She was fortunate to get started with songwriting while still at the Honor Band. She even wrote some of the music that the band would play at its shows.
“I found composition really absorbing,” Intersimone says. “I like to try to write music that I would like to listen to. I don’t think I would have had the facility if I hadn’t learned improvisation theory. When you play the standards, learn about setting up solos, all of that, it includes some form of improvisation. That’s always been in everything that I’ve ever written.”
Shortly after graduating college, she moved back to California, where she played jazz gigs, taught private piano lessons at her home, and eventually landed a gig as assistant musical director at the San Jose Repertory Theatre for a production of The Snow Queen.
Her compositional skills came in handy as she helped with arranging music and sometimes writing parts for individual musicians.
“I love that. I love being with talented performers. Some of them were truly exceptional,” Intersimone says.
Teaching was particularly special to her. Even now, with her full time coding job in New York, she still has one piano student that she teaches. Music has been a very important part of her life, and though it’s taken a backseat for now, she doesn’t think it will stay that way forever.
“I’d like to play with other people more, because that’s something I really miss,” Intersimone says. “I think I did it so much starting in high school, all the way up to a few years ago, that I didn’t really realize what I was missing until it had been gone for a little bit. I’ve just got to get out there and go to some jam sessions and re-insert myself into the scene.”
KUUMBWA JAZZ HONOR BAND AUDITIONS
Kuumbwa Jazz Honor Band auditions will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 18 at 4 p.m. and Tuesday, Sept. 25 at 5 p.m. For more information and to apply for an audition spot, go to kuumbwajazz.org.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Now is an excellent time to feel and explore and understand and even appreciate your sadness. To get you in the mood, here’s a list of sadnesses from novelist Jonathan Safran Foer: sadness of the could-have-been; sadness of being misunderstood; sadness of having too many options; sadness of being smart; sadness of awkward conversations; sadness of feeling the need to create beautiful things; sadness of going unnoticed; sadness of domesticated birds; sadness of arousal being an unordinary physical state; sadness of wanting sadness.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Do you have any feral qualities lurking deep down inside you? Have you ever felt a mad yearning to communicate using howls and yips instead of words? When you’re alone, do you sometimes dispense with your utensils and scoop the food off your plate with your fingers? Have you dreamed of running through a damp meadow under the full moon for the sheer ecstasy of it? Do you on occasion experience such strong erotic urges that you feel like you could weave your body and soul together with the color green or the sound of a rain-soaked river or the moon rising over the hills? I ask these questions, Taurus, because now is an excellent time to draw on the instinctual wisdom of your feral qualities.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): “Close some doors today,” writes novelist Paulo Coelho. “Not because of pride, incapacity, or arrogance, but simply because they lead you nowhere.” I endorse his advice for your use, Gemini. In my astrological opinion, you’ll be wise to practice the rough but fine art of saying No. It’s time for you to make crisp decisions about where you belong and where you don’t; about where your future fulfillment is likely to thrive and where it won’t; about which relationships deserve your sage intimacy and which tend to push you in the direction of mediocrity.
CANCERIAN (June 21-July 22): To casual observers you may seem to be an amorphous hodgepodge, or a simmering mess of semi-interesting confusion, or an amiable dabbler headed in too many directions at once. But in my opinion, casual observers would be wrong in that assessment. What’s closer to the symbolic truth about you is an image described by poet Carolyn Forché: grapes that are ripening in the fog. Here’s another image that resonates with your current state: sea turtle eggs gestating beneath the sand on a misty ocean beach. One further metaphor for you: the bright yellow flowers of the evening primrose plant, which only bloom at night.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): I want to make sure that the groove you’re in doesn’t devolve into a rut. So I’ll ask you unexpected questions to spur your imagination in unpredictable directions. Ready? 1. How would you describe the untapped riches in the shadowy part of your personality? 2. Is there a rare object you’d like to own because it would foster your feeling that the world has magic and miracles? 3. Imagine the perfect party you’d love to attend and how it might change your life for the better. 4. What bird most reminds you of yourself? 5. What’s your most evocative and inspiring taboo daydream? 6. In your past, were there ever experiences that made you cry for joy in ways that felt almost orgasmic? How might you attract or induce a catharsis like that sometime soon?
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): By volume, the Amazon is the largest river in the world. But where does it originate? Scientists have squabbled about that issue for over 300 years. Everyone agrees the source is in southwestern Peru. But is it the Apurímac River? The Marañón? The Mantaro? There are good arguments in favor of each. Let’s use this question as a poetic subtext as we wonder and meditate about the origin of your life force, Virgo. As is the case for the Amazon, your source has long been mysterious. But I suspect that’s going to change during the next 14 months. And the clarification process begins soon.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): When Warsan Shire was a child, she immigrated to the U.K. with her Somali parents. Now she’s a renowned poet who writes vividly about refugees, immigrants, and other marginalized people. To provide support and inspiration for the part of you that feels like an exile or fugitive or displaced person, and in accordance with current astrological omens, I offer you two quotes by Shire. 1. “I belong deeply to myself.” 2. “Document the moments you feel most in love with yourself—what you’re wearing, who you’re around, what you’re doing. Recreate and repeat.”
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): “Once in a while came a moment when everything seemed to have something to say to you.” So says a character in Alice Munro’s short story “Jakarta.” Now I’m using that message as the key theme of your horoscope. Why? Because you’re at the peak of your ability to be reached, to be touched, to be communicated with. You’re willing to be keenly receptive. You’re strong enough to be deeply influenced. Is it because you’re so firmly anchored in your understanding and acceptance of who you are?
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): In 1928, novelist Virginia Woolf wrote a letter to her friend Saxon Sydney Turner. “I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading,” she confided, “since one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs 10 others at the same time.” My usual inclination is to counsel you Sagittarians to focus on one or two important matters rather than on a multitude of semi-important matters. But in accordance with current astrological omens, I’m departing from tradition to suggest you adopt Woolf’s approach to books as your approach to everything. Your life in the coming weeks should be less like an acoustic ballad and more like a symphony for 35 instruments.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Not many goats can climb trees, but there are daredevils in Morocco that do. They go in quest of the delicious olive-like berries that grow on argan trees. The branches on which they perch may be 30 feet off the ground. I’m naming them as your power creature for the coming weeks. I think you’re ready to ascend higher in search of goodies. You have the soulful agility necessary to transcend your previous level of accomplishment.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): From 49-45 BC, civil war wracked the Roman Republic. Julius Caesar led forces representing the common people against armies fighting for the aristocracy’s interests. In 45 BC, Caesar brought a contingent of soldiers to Roman territory in North Africa, intent on launching a campaign against the enemy. As the general disembarked from his ship, he accidentally slipped and fell. Thinking fast, he exclaimed, “Africa, I have tight told of you!” and clasped the ground, thus implying he had lowered himself on purpose in a ritual gesture of conquest. In this way, he converted an apparent bad omen into a positive one. And indeed, he won the ensuing battle, which was the turning point that led to ultimate victory and the war’s end. That’s good role modeling for you right now.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Below are sweet words I’ve borrowed from poets I love. I invite you to use them to communicate with anyone who is primed to become more lyrically intimate with you. The time is right for you to reach out! 1. “You look like a sea of gems.” – Qahar Aasi. 2. “I love you with what in me is unfinished.” – Robert Bly. 3. “Yours is the light by which my spirit’s born.” – E. E. Cummings. 4. “Tell me the most exquisite truths you know.” – Barry Hannah. 5. “It’s very rare to know you, very strange and wonderful.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald. 6. “When you smile like that you are as beautiful as all my secrets.” – Anne Carson. 7. Everything you say is “like a secret voice speaking straight out of my own bones.” – Sylvia Plath.
Homework: What good old thing could you give up in order to attract a great new thing into your life? Testify at Freewillastrology.com.
Mercury, the messenger, is the planet of sharing information, communication, and developing new and interesting ideas. Mercury works with Virgo, sign of gardens and new realities (organizing and tending to them with motherly care). Virgo, sign of purity, cleanliness and health, seeks to create a new livingness and wholeness in the environment we find ourselves in (home, work, school, play, towns, cities, etc.).
I recently discovered the book Pocket Neighborhoods:
Creating Small Scale Community in a Large-Scale World by author and architect Ross Chapin. Chapin writes about creating small communities within neighborhoods. Why would we consider this?
Our present world is experiencing a great restlessness due to dramatic social, familial, educational, economic, monetary and other shifts. In times of restlessness, a divine discontent takes hold, helping us rethink our ways of living. Our training, education and language teach us to live separately from others (and thus isolated). In the times to come, the Aquarian era, this separation will not be a choice.
Aquarius is the sign of creative individuals building communities, being cooperative, collaborative, constructing a bridge (of Light) from “the wilderness to the commons.” In so many ways, due to how our towns, cities and homes are built, humanity lacks places to gather together.
A reset is beginning to form in the life of humanity. New and alternative ways of living are needed, creating a new resonance with nearby neighbors and nature itself.
ARIES: Everything concerning daily life is evaluated. Observe your life, environments and all that is around you, assessing the ways you want to change in response to them and their needs. You realize you must do things differently from now on, considering what and how and the results. Careful at work when communicating with coworkers. You may sound harsher than usual. Observe health, diet, fitness, exercise, and how you feel each day.
TAURUS: Interesting situations and communication may occur with lovers, children, and your own creative identification. Unresolved issues in relationships will reappear, seeking a more harmonious conclusion. Remember to listen to the core message in all communications. Don’t defend. Pay attention carefully, instead. The unresolved issues must be dealt with, or there will be a dissolution of important things sometime in the future. Love and listening are everything.
GEMINI: Everything about home, family, mother, real estate, and things domestic come into focus, needing careful perspective. Make no important decisions unless an emergency occurs. Everyone around you is experiencing the same present astrological transits, only everyone experiences them differently. Use your Gemini mind to observe and understand the differences. Ask for nurturing. Call upon patience. You heal quickly that way.
CANCER: Cancer, like a crab, circles a situation, moving to the center from every direction. Crabs, wary of their prey, never walk in a straight line. Cancer therefore has a very developed intuition. In the next month, that intuition may be even more illumined, filled with impressions and visions and information needing to be shared. Take care with communication. Something from the past is remembered. Or perhaps you’re planning on traveling to a place you called home. Forgetfulness is good sometimes.
LEO: How is your financial situation? Do not create any great waves in your financial picture. No loans (given or applied for), so there is no undue stress. Bring order and organization to finances, create new budgets, assess the flow of money (what’s coming in, what’s going out), and the hows and whys of these transactions, reviewing if everything you prepared for is proceeding as planned. Include a review of your values. And tithe.
VIRGO: Are you feeling somewhat veiled, quiet, behind the scenes, unable to convey feelings? At this time you are very internally involved, your mind assessing spirituality and religion, memories from the past, what you learned and what you sacrificed. Your choices are clearly perceived and then reviewed to see if they still reflect your values and needs. Prayer at this time is helpful. It opens the heart.
LIBRA: Be aware of thoughts and issues and things not tended to for a long time coming into your present life, seeking the needed attention. Know that as a harmonizer you are always heard and seen by others. Be very clear when communicating; speak slowly, informing people exactly what your intentions are. Be non-judgmental, call forth compassion and patience. A quiet mindful retreat sustains you. Form a group of like-minded others to read, bead, crochet, paint, garden and/or bake together.
SCORPIO: Be aware that friends and groups are helpful for you to further define yourself. Have plans recently been delayed, changed or didn’t happen at all? Have those close to you been distant, internal or confused? Have thoughts, ideas and friends from the past made contact and have you considered re-entering a group or friendships from long ago? Allow no heartache or anguish from the past to continue. Your foundation is being restructured. Your daily life may feel foggy or veiled. It’s a protection.
SAGITTARIUS: Notice if there is sensitivity (or changes) around these subjects: money, partnerships, joint resources/finances (something from the past?), thinking about career choices, communicating with co-workers, being misunderstood while in public, your life path, your future? It seems like every subject is fraught with sensitive feelings. “Don’t worry. Be happy.” Who sang that? He was right. This too will pass. Remind yourself that you are, everything is, just perfect.
CAPRICORN: The “big guys” (Mars, Saturn, Pluto, Neptune and Chiron) are coming around for a bit of a chat. Saturn makes one serious and rather tired. Pluto lays transformations at our doorstep. Neptune makes us think we can’t think anymore. And Chiron tells us what hurts. Enter the Seed Group called the Observers, and just observe your life for a while. Assess promises and large decisions. So much is deeply internalized. Sometimes outer realities won’t make sense. Just keep gardening.
AQUARIUS: You’re becoming more practical about money and resources. After the next two months it would be good for you to travel. However, at this point set new goals concerning your money and resources, reaffirm what is of value to you and eliminate all that is no longer useful, unused, untouched or not looked at in the past several months. Use this Virgo time to shed beliefs hindering you from reality, visions, hopes and dreams. Investing? Gold and silver are best.
PISCES: Maintain clean communication with partners, intimates and those close to you. Relationships seek to heal misunderstandings, disappointments, criticisms, overreactions, mixed messages and separations. Mediation may be needed for understanding to occur. Pisces is to assess the value of their own thoughts, minds, decisions and needs, and discriminate between the self and their beloved. Seeing the other as “luminous” is the disciple’s task. It heals all wounds.
On a clear Wednesday evening in late August, around 170 landlords and homeowners—and even a few renters—gathered at the Westside tasting room of Stockwell Cellars. Set amid rustic wine barrels and industrial-chic chandeliers, the event marked the launch of a campaign against Santa Cruz rent control initiative Measure M, which will be decided by local voters this fall after a recent wave of similar efforts in other California cities.
As the anti-rent-control kickoff went on inside, a small protest just outside the winery’s outdoor patio went live on Facebook. Young speakers who had organized a “Vigil for the Displaced of Santa Cruz” passed a bullhorn a few feet away from their opposition, separated only by a thin strip of gravel lined with drought-resistant plants.
“Oh, I’d love to give a story,” one rent-control opponent broke in, interrupting a protester mid-speech. “Can I give a story?”
“No!” the protestors replied. As the man walked away, one protestor yelled after him: “I hope you like the fart noise I left on your voicemail!”
While campaign mudslinging is par for the course, the battle over Measure M is getting particularly intense, as record housing prices collide with sharp generational divides and anxiety about widening economic inequality. The oddest part about the rent-control controversy: almost everyone agrees that rents do need some control as they climb precariously high.
“Most people don’t object to limiting rent increases,” said Lynn Renshaw, who owns multiple properties in Santa Cruz, and is a lead organizer of the anti-rent-control group Santa Cruz Together.
Renshaw says she would support a City Council draft ordinance that would limit rent increases to 10 percent a year, or 15 percent over two years. Measure M would limit annual rent increases to the rate of inflation of the Consumer Price Index, which rose about 2 percent each of the last two years.
The rent-control supporters who authored Measure M and collected more than 5,000 valid signatures to get it on the ballot argue that capping big, sudden rent hikes isn’t enough. “Unless there are protections against evictions without cause, a landlord can just evict somebody and jack the rents up to whatever they want,” says Zav Hershfield, a local renter and organizer with the Santa Cruz Tenant Organizing Committee.
Among the most controversial changes proposed in Measure M are new rules for “just-cause eviction,” which stipulate that a landlord can only kick tenants out for specific reasons like failure to pay rent, nuisance, or an owner move-in to the property. Though other recently approved rent control ordinances in Oakland, Mountain View and Richmond include similar rules, the Santa Cruz measure would require a larger-than-average relocation payment—the equivalent of six months of market-rate rent, well over $10,000 for larger units—from landlords who order tenants to leave for reasons unrelated to tenant conduct.
Hershfield draws from personal experience to explain the importance of such rules. He says he was evicted from an older house he shared with several roommates earlier this year with 120 days’ notice and no reason given.
“It was a scramble and a half to find something. We were looking for three months,” he says. “It’s stressful. I have to work.”
Rent control opponent Peter Cook, a real estate agent and property manager who oversees rentals to some 500 UCSC students, said red tape can already make it difficult and costly to evict tenants accused of illegal or dangerous behavior. Santa Cruz Together has seized on this idea to warn on its website that “Your neighborhood will deteriorate.”
Cook also questions who will benefit from rent control. In Santa Monica, he points out, a 2016 city report estimated that just 4 percent of rent-controlled units were occupied by working-class renters. The report adds that California’s Costa-Hawkins Act—which is up for repeal in November with the statewide Proposition 10—allows landlords to reset rents each time a tenant moves out, raising the prices of rent-controlled units over time.
“If I have a line of people, I’m not going to take a chance on a low-income person,” Cook says of the many choices landlords currently have in popular areas like Santa Cruz. “There’s a few lucky ones who will be, you know, dug in an apartment until their death.”
Clashing Activists
“I got really excited about Bernie Sanders’ campaign,” says Jeffrey Smedberg, a retired Santa Cruz County recycling coordinator and rent-control advocate, remembering what inspired him to become politically active.
Answering Sanders’ call to stay involved locally after the 2016 presidential election was a driving force behind Smedberg getting involved first in a challenge to the city’s camping ban impacting homeless residents and now rent control. Though Smedberg owns a home with a group of co-owners, he supports rent control because “homeowners really have the bulk of the power” in the city.
Renshaw, who works in software marketing, also cites 2016 as a turning point in her political activism. “I really got engaged as an activist after Trump’s election,” she says. “Working on local politics, you can tell you’re actually moving the needle.”
For Renshaw, the brand of further-left politics espoused by pro-rent control campaigners at events like the winery protest come off as “weak.” Cook, a Santa Cruz Together board member, frames rent control as one front in a broader local culture war.
“These folks are really trying to establish their vision of social justice on our city and California by forcing rent control,” Cook says. He’s critical of the role statewide tenant groups like San Francisco-based Tenants Together have had in shaping Measure M.
Hershfield says that while the campaign sought legal advice from Bay Area-based attorneys to craft the specifics of Measure M, it’s “hilarious” to characterize the pro-rent control campaign as a well-heeled political machine. Instead, he points to the $60,000 his opponents have raised so far, as well as to the outsized role realtor associations and the California Apartment Association have played in other rent-control races, pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into 2016 elections in Mountain View, Burlingame and elsewhere.
While the campaigns for Measure M, a $140 million county affordable housing bond, and the statewide Proposition 10 play out this fall, one question is whether housing prices will increase, decrease or stay at their current level near historic highs in the meantime.
Santa Cruz, like many area cities, has failed to meet its state-ordered number of new housing units for much of the last few decades, creating a scenario where demand is high and supply is low. Realtor.com lists a total of 336 properties for sale in Santa Cruz at a median $995,000 as of early September. The cheapest non-mobile-home or non-senior housing listed is a $419,500, one-bedroom condo on River Street. Those who do buy a house are purchasing them for an average 130 percent of the list price.
While Cook says rent control would not “crater the housing market” due to strong demand from reliable groups like Silicon Valley retirees, he said some landlords are already considering selling off rental units. It might not make for the catchiest campaign slogan, but the San Francisco native points to his hometown—currently one of the most expensive markets in the world—to argue that rent control is a bridge too far.
“My chant is like, ‘It’s better to have an expensive rental than no rental,’” he says. “That’s the unfortunate reality right now.”
What’s in Measure M?
– Maximum annual rent increase: Equal to annual increase in inflation (Consumer Price Index), which rose about 2 percent each of the last two years.
– Rent rollback: Baseline rents would revert to Oct. 19, 2017.
– Evictions: New “just cause” eviction rule would prohibit landlords from making tenants leave without a specific reason, including: failure to pay rent, nuisance, need for substantial repairs, owner move-ins, or to remove property from the rental market.
– Relocation fees: In the event of an eviction unrelated to tenant’s conduct, landlord would pay a minimum of six months rent for relocation assistance.
– Subleases and additional tenants: Landlords would not be allowed to evict tenants for subleasing rental units, so long as the primary tenant remains in the unit and the new tenant replaces an existing tenant. Landlords would also be barred from evicting tenants for moving in a spouse or partner, a child, a parent, a grandchild, a grandparent, a sibling, or those relatives’ spouses, so long as housing code limits on occupancy are not exceeded.
– Types of properties exempted: Hospitals, transient occupancies and room rentals where tenant shares kitchen and bathroom.Single-family homes, condos and new units built after 1995 would also be exempt from rent limits (but not just-cause eviction rules), unless state Proposition 10 passes and repeals the longstanding Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act.
– Oversight: New rent board, initially appointed by the city and then elected, would settle petitions or disputes. Measure would be an amendment to city charter, requiring voter approval for repeal or future amendments.
This gig came well over a decade after his experience with the Kuumbwa Jazz Honor Band in high school. First, he attended the Brubeck Institute in Stockton for two years, then moved to New York, where he finished his education at the New School. While there, and for several years after, he gigged as much as he could.
It hasn’t always been easy. The program—through no fault of the previous band director, Bianchini says—wasn’t doing too great when he got there. But in a few short years, he’s already grown the band in numbers, and made an impression in competition—including the Anaheim Heritage Festival last year at the Rose Center Theater, where they got a silver rating, meaning they were in the top 20 percent of high school bands in the country.
The Le Boeuf Brothers now have four albums. The group is comprised of Pascal and his identical twin Remy Le Boeuf, who have been playing music together since they were kids, and who both went through the Kuumbwa Jazz Honor Band program.
It was in another program Hahn did after Kuumbwa, the SFJAZZ High School All Stars, that he met Limb.
She has been living in New York City with this job for about a half a year. After graduating high school, she moved to Los Angeles to study jazz at UCLA, and then to New York to study jazz composition at New York University. There she recorded an album of her original pieces of songwriting as a class assignment.
