Storm Sings ‘Sins’ with the Santa Barbara Symphony

As anyone knows who’s seen Storm Large subbing in with Pink Martini in the Portland band’s frequent visits to Santa Barbara, there’s not a lot of guile when the slyly sultry and self-possessed singer takes the stage – or does interviews. 

That’s been true no matter who’s she talking to or whether she’s singing punk-flavored rock in the late 1990s, world pop with Pink Martini, acting in theater pieces or performing in front of a symphony. We’ll get to hear her in the latter role this weekend when Large stars as Anna, the split personality focus of The Seven Deadly Sins, Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s Weimar Republic-era indictment of capitalism. Performed by the Santa Barbara Symphony, Sins features the morally conflicted Anna journeying across seven cities, each representing a different sin, the young woman struggling between virtue and vice, reason and desire. 

The renowned Hudson Shad Quartet, who have performed The Seven Deadly Sins more than any other vocal ensemble over the past 30 years, provides the voice of Anna’s family, acting as a Greek chorus that reinforces and questions society’s moral expectations. 

Large has become a leading lady for Sins ever since she sang Anna with the Detroit Symphony under Leonard Slatkin in her Carnegie Hall debut in 2011, her first of about 25 performances of the piece. But (it turns out) the singer wasn’t a big fan of the vocally and thematically challenging piece at first. 

“Honestly, I didn’t like it at all when I first started to learn it,” Large said. “It was so German, so Teutonic and measured and not very colorful. It’s a very dry narrative, not emotionally floored and passionate in the way I like to perform.”

But over time, Large said, she began to feel more comfortable in the role and recognized how she would fit into the creators’ use of Biblical references to skewer hedonism and societal splits, which may be even more germane today.

“After four or five times, I started to get how dark and funny it is, and how the dryness of the narrative and the nature of the piece – with the weird, clunky jazz cosplay sounds of the music – work together to leave the emotional reality to the audience to feel,” she said. “It’s almost like an interview with a serial killer who sounds like he’s talking about his shopping list for CVS. This woman is being torn apart on stage, but it’s still darkly funny.”

Large is able to draw on her own family history to embody Anna, as her mother suffered from lifelong mental illness, and was hospitalized for many years. 

“I have all these anecdotal facts in my experience,” said the singer, who readily admitted she’s committed all of the sins over her life. “Some of it came to me when I was inside Anna’s character. But I sing it in my own way. I’m not classically trained. When I portray Anna, it’s visceral and kind of raunchy. For me, it’s the way I make her understandable and sympathetic and flesh and blood and real.”

Somewhat surprisingly, the symphony isn’t pairing Sins with perhaps more palatable well-known standard fare, instead playing Jacques Ibert’s Divertissement orchestral suite, William Grant Still’s “Seven Little Pieces” from The Black Belt, and Jessie Montgomery’s “Strum,” which should result in quite a ride for the audience at the March 22-23 concerts.

Visit www.granadasb.org or www.thesymphony.org