Ham It up

Our tony town’s Rescue Mission hosted its annual Easter Feast for our community’s more impoverished residents, and for the 11th year my trusty shutterbug, Priscilla, and I volunteered our services as waiters.

Kitchen director Wesley Jones served 320 pounds of ham, 200 pounds of potatoes, 360 pounds of carrots, and 75 pounds of peas to the hungry guests, rounded off with desserts of carrot, cheese, chocolate, and red velvet cake, as violinist Chase Fierro serenaded the room.

“It is a heaping help of love that transforms hearts and lives this Easter and beyond,” says Rolf Geyling, president of the mission, which has a $2.5-million annual budget and helps more than 2,000 people yearly.

A most rewarding afternoon.

There’s No Doubting Thomas

CAMA, the Community Arts Music Association, hosted its final international series concert of its 99th season, when the San Francisco Symphony, under veteran conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, performed to a packed house at the Granada.

It was the eighth time the orchestra played a CAMA season, four of them under Thomas, who is retiring after 25 years in two years time, having won 12 Grammys for SF Symphony recordings.

The entertaining performance kicked off with Austrian Alban Berg‘s rigorous 1936 Violin Concerto played to perfection by New York’s Gil Shaham, who has had multi-year residencies with the orchestras of Stuttgart, Montreal, and Singapore, as well as playing with the Berlin, Israel, Los Angeles, and New York philharmonic orchestras, Chicago Symphony, and the Orchestre de Paris.

The multi-Grammy winner was playing a 1699 Countess Polignac Stradivarius violin.

The concert concluded with Mahler’s 1902 Symphony No.5 in C-sharp minor.

CAMA’s centennial, which starts in October, promises to be a cracker with the schedule including the Russian National Orchestra, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and violinist Itzhak Perlman.

Toth Implant

Santa Barbara Yacht Club has a new manager, Layosh Toth, on board.

Toth has eight years of experience managing country clubs and worked for seven years as manager of the Coral Reef Yacht Club in Miami, Florida, where he organized adult and youth sailing activities, including Miami Sailing Week and the prestigious Junior Orange Bowl Regatta.

For the past four years he was manager of the Larchmont Yacht Club in New York.

“I want to raise the level of service throughout the club and continue the long-standing traditions,” says Toth, who also brings his wife, Katalin, with him to the Left Coast.

On the Horne

The two winners of the Marilyn Horne Song Competition, soprano Hannah Rose Kidwell and pianist Christina Giuca, both alumnae of the Miraflores campus, exhibited their obvious talents at the Music Academy of the West’s Hahn Hall.

The dynamic duo were on a four-city schedule, starting in Houston, Texas, before winging to Chicago and wrapping their tour at Steinway Hall in New York.

Their eclectic show included works by Turina, Mahler, Enescu, Heggi, concluding with Leonard Bernstein’s “Somewhere” from West Side Story and Cole Porter’s “Looking at You”.

Be That As It May

I vividly remember going to a Beatles concert in 1963 as a I0-year-old in England having spent what I thought was an extortionate $3 for a ticket for the show at the ABC theater in Northampton.

Compounding the angst was that I was unable to hear a single song, given the shrill screaming of the besotted females in the audience as the Fab Four of George, Paul, John, and Ringo played “She Loves You” and their other early hits.

What a difference it was at the Granada when the Theater League staged Let It Be: A Celebration of the Music of The Beatles, which imagined a reunion of the lively Liverpudlians 10 years after the mop-topped rockers threw in the musical towel on what would have been John Lennon’s 40th birthday.

The highly entertaining show opened in London six years ago, the 50th anniversary of the release of their debut album Please Please Me and premiered on Broadway a year later, in the footsteps of another Great White Way show Beatlemania in the 1970s.

The concert not only included songs from The Beatles’s extensive catalog, but from their individual careers, including George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” – a personal favorite – Paul McCartney’s Bond-themed “Live and Let Die”, and John Lennon’s “Imagine”.

The sold-out, two-hour show, which has been seen by more than 2 million people, featured a treasure trove from the early days of “Hard Day’s Night” and “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”, to more iconic later works such as “Get Back”, “Strawberry Fields”, and “Hey Jude”.

At least this time around, I got to hear every word.

Lower Expectations

Santa Barbara warbler Katy Perry has re-listed her Hollywood Hills home for $9.3 million after buying the Mediterranean-style villa for $8.2 million from oil heiress Aileen Getty.

The 33-year-old “I Kissed a Girl” hit-maker has been having problems selling the property, which boasts hiking trails and extensive gardens.

In September, the former Dos Pueblos High student sought $9.5 million for the 4-bedroom, 6-bath 2.3-acre estate in the exclusive Outpost Estates area with panoramic views of the Big Orange.

Pitch Perfect

Santa Barbara Symphony is celebrating its 65th anniversary season in style, securing Broadway star Lisa Vroman, who sang in Phantom of the Opera for two years on the Great White Way and five years in San Francisco, as host and entertainment for its October 19 ball at the Hilton Santa Barbara Beachfront Resort, formerly Fess Parker’s.

Anne Towbes and Janet Garufis will co-chair the boffo bash. “It promises to be an evening of high note,” says executive director Kevin Marvin.

Sightings: Actor Gary Sinise at Fess Parker’s…Former Sopranos star Michael Imperioli and wife Victoria noshing at Olio e Limone…Rocker Alan Parsons masticating at Opal

Pip! Pip!