Folk Orchestra: Ten Going on Sixties

Folk Orchestra of Santa Barbara has come a long way since its humble beginnings in 2016 as a one-off jam session fashioned and hosted by Adam Phillips. Back then, the former Voice and Musical Theatre major was singing tenor with Quire of Voyces, the Santa Barbara Chorale Society, and Opera Santa Barbara, and was already seven-years deep into his current job as music director of Goleta’s Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. 

“It was just some fiddle players, harp and guitar, when I was just starting to learn bagpipes,” Phillips recalled last week. “I put together lead sheets for everyone’s favorite tunes and we were just making it up in a hybrid Irish jam as we went along.” 

When the night was over, he mused that it would be cool to turn the jam into an actual orchestra, with full arrangements and a more formal concert. “Everyone was like, “Oh, that would be awesome,” Phillips said. “If you do it, I’m in.” 

The first public gig of the official FOSB – which merges traditional and exotic folk instruments with orchestral strings, including violins, violas, cellos and double bass to very nearly create a new genre – focused on Celtic music and sold out the Presidio Chapel. When they repeated the show it sold out again. That’s when Phillips knew they were onto something. 

So actually, FOSB hasn’t actually come all that far in the interim, as the ensemble is still playing at least one of its home town gigs each concert weekend at the Presidio Chapel, although now there are repeats at such venues as the Lobero, Trinity Church in Santa Barbara, and St. Mark’s in Los Olivos. The season stretches to four concerts each year. 

Now FOSB is marking its 10th anniversary with a new series. It opens this weekend with the return of “The Sixties” program, the popular hybrid that lends Phillips’ folk-classical arrangements and orchestrations to rock and pop anthems of the era, played by more than 30 musicians who, collectively, have both classical chops and a kinship with pop music. 

Audiences are sure to recognize the repertoire, albeit in vastly different presentations. Some of them are more faithful to the original recordings, like “Both Sides Now,” Phillips said. But others, such as “Paint It Black?”

“Yeah, it’s different,” Phillips said. “When you add in hurdy gurdy and other crazy instruments into the Rolling Stones, that’s going to happen.” 

The Doors’ “Rider’s on the Storm” gets a fresh approach, Phillips said, citing the iconic bass riff and “a floating, descending organ passage.” “It’s pretty fun because I have the flute starting it out and then it dovetails into the harp with a beautiful cascading sound before Bear Erickson, our one concession to electric instruments, takes a ripping guitar solo in the middle.” 

A similar treatment glowingly recapitulates Booker T. & the M.G.’s “Green Onions,” with its organ transcribed for fiddle and mandolin. 

Some of those parts are played by Phillips himself, a self-taught musician who said he barely played guitar when he first moved to town but now counts 20-something different instruments in his repertoire, including flutes, strings, a variety of pipes, and more in his instrument room. “Jack of all trades, master of none,” he said humbly. 

The rest of the season includes the annual Scottish/Celtic themed show on November 6-8, a second stab at Nordic music on January 29-31 – “the music, the tonalities, the moods, and the instruments are so cool, we had to go there again,” Phillips said – and the traditional Irish concert pre-dating St. Patrick’s Day celebrations on March 12-14. 

A version of FOSB will also be supporting The Tribe “Orchestrated Tribute to The Beatles” at the Arlington Theatre on October 17.

Visit www.folkorchestrasb.com