Review: Young Brazilian violinist Guido Sant’Anna Commands Attention at The Conrad
Guido Sant’Anna playing the violin at The Conrad. (Photo by Ken Jaques/La Jolla Music Society)Music lovers who thought Brazil’s only musical exports were samba and bossa nova got a pleasant shock on Sunday when La Jolla Music Society brought young Brazilian violinist Guido Sant’Anna to La Jolla’s Baker-Baum Concert Hall. Classical music may not be immediately associated with Brazil, but it has a rich history there. The work of Hector Villa-Lobos, its greatest composer, including Bachianas Brasileiras (Brazilian Bach-pieces) has stood the test of time, and pianist Nelson Freire (who died in 2021) built a formidable reputation through refined interpretations of Chopin, Brahms, Liszt and, naturally, Villa-Lobos. Like Freire, Sant’Anna, born in Sao Paulo, was a child prodigy. At seven, he made his orchestral debut, and by high school (at Graded – the American School of São Paulo), he was demonstrating talent not only in violin but electric guitar (a YouTube clips shows him ably burning through Van Halen’s ‘Eruption’). At 17, he became the first South American to win the International Fritz Kreisler Competition. Last October, he made his North American debut in Chicago.Absolutely nothing about his recital with pianist Henry Kramer on Sunday hinted at any limits to Sant’Anna’s future potential. Powered by his 1874 Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, Sant’Anna delivers a strong, clean tone, neither “wiry” nor overlush — expressive no question but with a mature restraint and moderate vibrato. On stage, he projects a relaxed, almost athletic poise, as if he knows there’s nothing he can’t handle. While playing, he makes big deliberate steps back and forth, as if ballroom-dancing the music, with the occasional shoulder jerk of an Olympian limbering up. In other words, he commands your attention.Sant’Anna’s opening reading of Chausson’s Poème (1896) was masterful: keening, aching, but never unbridled, sentimental, overwrought. That tone continued in the first movement (Allegretto) of Ravel’s ambitious Sonata in G Major (1927). But in the second movement (Blues: Moderato), Sant’Anna and Kramer showed an unbuttoned side: swinging, jazzy chops that never vamped for the audience or manhandled the score (Ravel insisted that whatever the movement’s American inspiration, it was “French music, Ravel’s music”). Following the “fine Gallic frenzy” (Adam Loft’s phrase) of the last movement’s Perpetuum mobile — which inspired a ‘Woo!’ or two from the hall — Sant’Anna and Kramer began swinging even wider with their full-on execution of Igor Forlov’s demanding 1991 arrangement of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Where Kramer’s role felt supportive in the recital’s opening span, he emerged as Sant’Anna’s equal partner from Ravel’s Blues into the Gershwin and on. The personality and rhythmic drive he infused helped the duo kick up quite a few decibels before Sant’Anna’s last upstroke sparked a standing ovation and general clamor. Exchanging “We pulled it off” grins, the pair took their break.Post intermission, Sant’Anna and Kramer offered Clara Schumann’s Three Romances (op. 22), her penultimate composition before, widowed at age 36, she turned to a better-paying career: concertizing. After the soulful fun of Gershwin, these gentle pieces felt a bit perfunctory, but Sant’Anna and Kramer fully refocused for Schubert’s Fantasy in C Major (1827). Its hurdles for the violinist include rapid runs, double stops, harmonics, and difficult bowing. But the piano part’s challenges, from fast passagework to tricky arpeggios, have earned it a reputation as “the most difficult music ever written for the piano” (Nikolai Lugansky). Again, Kramer stepped up, driving the opening Andante molto forward until Sant’Anna’s delicate dance in the Allegretto shifted the mood. After the duo unfurled Schubert’s increasingly complex variations on Sei mir gegrüsst, Kramer reset the mood with the Allegro vivace’s jaunty, regal theme, which Sant’Anna echoed. After Kramer sang the Allegretto’s (A flat major) lyrical melody, the duo raced together through the exultant Presto. As the hall rose to its feet, it was obvious had Kramer had fully earned top-billing rights with Sant’Anna.Their encore, Fritz Kreisler’s Schön Rosmarin, reminded everyone where Sant’Anna’s sights are justifiably set: the top.Paul Bodine is a San Diego writer.
‘Bring Your Own Brigade,’ 2021 Wildfire Film, Proved Prescient About Danger California Faces
When Lucy Walker debuted her harrowing documentary about California wildfires, “Bring Your Own Brigade” at Sundance in 2021, it was during peak COVID. Not the best time for a film on a wholly different scourge.“It was really hard,” the Oscar-nominated filmmaker says now. “I didn’t blame people for not wanting to watch a film about the fires in the middle of the pandemic, because it was just too much horror.”And so the film, though acclaimed — it was named one of the 10 best films of the year by the New York Times – didn’t reach an audience as large as Walker had hoped, with its urgent display of the human cost of wildfires and its tough, crucial questions for the future.That could change. Walker thinks people may now be more receptive to her message, given the devastating wildfires that have wreaked havoc on Los Angeles the past week. Firefighters were preparing on Tuesday to attack new blazes amid warnings that winds combined with severely dry conditions created a “particularly dangerous situation.”“This is probably the moment where it becomes undeniable,” she said in an interview.She added: “It does feel like people are now asking the question that I was asking a few years ago, like, ‘Is it safe to live in Los Angeles? And why is this happening, and what can we do about it? And the good news is that there are some things we can do about it. What’s tricky is that they’re really hard to accomplish.”Confronting complacencyIn “Bring Your Own Brigade” (available on Paramount+), Walker portrays in sometimes terrifying detail the devastation caused by two wildfires on the same day in 2018, products of the same wind event — the Camp Fire that engulfed the northern California city of Paradise and the Woolsey fire in Malibu, two towns on opposite ends of the political and economic spectrum.She embeds herself with firefighters, and explores the lives of locals affected by the fire. She shares harrowing cellphone footage of people driving through exploding columns of fire as they try to escape, crying out “I don’t want to die!” She plays 911 calls in which people plead vainly for rescue as fire laps at their backyards or invades their homes.And she conveys a layered message: Devastating fires in California are increasingly inevitable. Climate change is a clear accelerating factor, yes, but it’s not the only one, and therein lies an element of hope: There are things people can do, if they start to make different (and difficult) choices — in both where and how they choose to live.But first, complacency must be vanquished.“Complacency sets in when there hasn’t been a fire for a few years and you start to think, it might not happen again,” Walker says.It even affected Walker herself a few months ago. A British transplant to Los Angeles, she had chosen to live on the Venice-Santa Monica border — too scared, she says, to live in the city’s lovely hilly areas with small winding roads, surrounded by nature and vegetation, near the canyons that wildfires love.But a few months ago, she started wondering if over-anxiety about wildfires had incorrectly influenced her choice. And then, of course, came the Palisades catastrophe, “this God awful reminder that it only takes one event,” she says.The challenge of enacting safety measuresWalker became interested in making a film about wildfires after she arrived in the city and wondered if she was safe. “Why is the hillside on fire?” she says she wondered. “Why do people just keep on driving?” She had considered such fires “a medieval problem.”One thing she learned while filming: Firefighters were even more impressive and courageous than she’d thought. “If you want to watch a firefighter have their heart broken, it’s when they want to do more,” she says. “I was just absolutely wowed by how incredibly selfless and brilliant they were.”Not that the public wasn’t angry at them — her film depicts angry residents of Malibu, for example, chastising firefighters for not doing enough.One of the most stunning parts of “Bring Your Own Brigade” — the title is a reference to the economic inequity of wealthy homeowners or celebrities like Kim Kardashian hiring private firefighters — is watching the reaction of firefighters at a town meeting in Paradise, where 85 people had been killed in the fire. They’ve convened to discuss adopting safety measures as they rebuild. One by one, measures are rejected — even the simplest, requiring a five-foot buffer around every house where nothing is flammable. Safety takes a back burner to individual choice.“It was very shocking to be at that meeting in particular, given that people had died in the most horrible way in that community. And you have firefighters with tears in their eyes saying, ‘This is what we need to have happen to keep us safe, and then (they) get voted down.”Walker is not the only filmmaker to have made a film about Paradise. In 2020, Ron Howard directed “Rebuilding Paradise,” focused on the effort to rebuild and the resilience of residents. Walker says she looked at the same set of facts and arrived at different takeaways.Towns people were indeed amazing and resilient, Walker says. “But are we right to be building back without a real rethink? Because the tragedy is that these fires are predictably going to be repeating and against the backdrop of climate change, they’re getting worse, not better.”Rethinking where we live — and howThat rethink involves making hard calls about where people should live. “The population is overwhelmingly moving into these wildland urban interface areas,” Walker says, referring to areas where housing meets undeveloped wildland vegetation — exactly the areas most likely to burn.In California, some of these places are very expensive — like Palisades and Malibu — but others are in more affordable areas. With the great pressure on housing, more people are moving into such areas, she says. But the “braking mechanism” could be that insurance companies “are doing the math, and it’s not sustainable.”It’s not only a question of where people live.“What does a fire-hardened home look like?” Walker asks. “Design-wise, that does dictate certain things.” For example: “This lovely wood is going to require tremendous firefighting.”It’s too early to know, but Walker thinks she may be hearing something different now from those who’ve lost homes, of whom she knows many.“What I’m hearing from people is not just ‘I can’t wait to rebuild. Let me rebuild,’” she says. “It’s: ‘How could we go through that again?’”Inset photo: Firefighters battling the 2018 Woolsey Fire in Ventura County. (Courtesy of Ventura County Fire Department)
Bodhi Tree Concerts Celebrate Local Artists, San Diego’s Diverse Community
Jazz artist Irving Flores. (File photo courtesy of the artist)Bodhi Tree Concerts is now entering its 14th season with a fresh new lineup.The annual concert series, which says on its website that it “strives to create a community of local artists presenting music that celebrates and honors people across race, class, gender, communities, and other differences,” features local Afro-Cuban jazz and Mexican artists, as well as the return of the “Music en la Calle” street music festival. The season, which consists of four dates spanning February to June, celebrates local artists and different cultures within the San Diego community. Beginning Feb. 9, all concerts will be hosted at St. James by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in La Jolla. The first performance will feature San Diego jazz artist Irving Flores and opera singer Salvador Padilla in a benefit for City Heights Community Development’s New Roots Garden. The three-acre urban farm provides a growing space for refugee families. On March 9, the second concert will highlight the voices of Mexico through the performances of soprano Mariana Flores Bucio and tenor Miguel Zazueta. In an effort to support Earth Discovery Institute’s mission to conserve San Diego’s biodiversity, the concert will benefit their Monarch Butterfly Garden program.On May 3, Mariachi Cali and Danz Arts San Diego will take the stage to showcase the history and geography of Mexico through music and dance. This also will be a benefit to support the Friends of Friendship Park. The community organization advocates for preservation of Friendship Park, a symbol of unity at the U.S.-Mexico border. To bring the 2025 season to a close, Bodhi Tree Concerts will host the free international music festival “Music En La Calle” on June 14 in the heart of City Heights. The festival will include music and food from around the globe, including places like Mexico, Japan, Burma, and West Africa, while also acknowledging the contributions of Indigenous Americans.Founders Diana and Walter DuMelle have been organizing Bodhi Tree events together since 2012. They want not only to create a platform for local artists but also give back to the community by donating a portion of the profits to charity. Built on the foundation of performing “intentional acts of kindness through music,” Bodhi Tree Concerts has donated more than $60,000 to charitable organizations such as Mama’s Kitchen, Voices for Children, and Erase Poverty.“We are thrilled to share an exciting season of concerts that promise to uplift, inspire and unite us through the universal language of music,” Diana DuMelle said. This season, she said, is in preparation for the world premiere of Bodhi Tree’s new chamber opera, Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote, scheduled for both San Diego and Tijuana in January 2026. “We believe the power of music will help build up community and create joy,” she said.Visit Bodhi Tree Concerts online for more information on ticket prices and event hours for the upcoming season.
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