Tag archives: artist
Ziyad Marcus is a world music musician with a diverse background and education. Recently appointed as a music educator for the Santa Barbara Charter School, he draws upon Sri Lankan and Jewish cultural roots in order to share an unfiltered view of the world with youth, something he cherishes and takes seriously. At 27, his […]
From performing as a solo artist on the Ojai-Ventura music scene, to opening for Ronnie Spector in Los Angeles and the English Beat in Ojai, to gigs with her band on the main stage at the NAMM show and L.A., one thing sings out clearly: Jade Hendrix is a phenomenal female artist. The thirty-something singer-songwriter […]
As I write the introduction for today’s letter, I’m doing something I usually don’t do while I write and edit: listen to music. I’m listening to a funky, young album called The Deep End produced by a composing duo who recorded the whole thing in only two weeks. Today we’re hearing from rising artist, Clay […]
Toni Scott on Bearing Witness and the Transformative Power of Art For this new “Our Town” series, we are interviewing visual and musical artists in hopes of sparking larger discussions about the inherent value of art and creativity, especially at a time when the arts are playing such a prominent role in contextualizing our experiences […]
I met Jakob Hammer, son of two of my favorite MUS teachers (Jackie and Kurt Hammer), in second grade. With our diametrically opposed love of Star Wars and Star Trek, Webkinz and Club Penguin, and contradictory opinions about Crocs as footwear, Jakob and I may not have seemed like a natural pairing, but we’ve now […]
Festival artist Jennifer Lemay, who started street painting with chalk for I Madonnari in the festival’s second year in 1988 and has missed only a handful of I-Mads over the ensuing 32 years, is joining nearly 60 other artists in creating works in her own driveway to celebrate the Memorial Day Weekend event. We caught […]
A new book, The Art of Symeon Shimin, featuring the paintings, drawings and writings of the late Russian-born Jewish artist, who died in New York in 1984 at the age of 82, has just been published. The work includes reproductions of more than 70 works, his autobiography Metamorphosis, and essays by Independent writers Charles Donelan […]
Contemporary artist/sculptor and thinker Richard Aber and his wife, Carol, have lived on bucolic Greenwell Road in Summerland, where he has created art diligently in his home studio on their property, for the past 41 years. His contemplative pieces have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including in several exhibitions in Italy, where the coronavirus has […]
Montecito’s singer-songwriter hero is logging his time during the pandemic. Kenny Loggins is staying at home during the shelter-in-place era as the COVID-19 pandemic stopped everything in its tracks. Actually, make that homes. The 72-year-old singer-songwriter, who began scoring hits back in the early 1970s in a duo with Jim Messina, found fertile ground with […]
San Marcos High sophomore and Santa Barbara Teen Star Sofia Schuster really is a golden girl! The 16-year-old singer traveled down to Los Angeles to an audition for the latest series of the popular ABC TV series American Idol in front of local warbler Katy Perry, Lionel Richie, and Luke Bryan, and received the golden […]
Despite coronavirus concerns, there were few cancellations when Elliot Wuu, winner of the Music Academy of the West’s solo piano competition, performed at Hahn Hall. The 20-year-old, an undergraduate of New York’s Juilliard School showing great finesse, won the recital and a future one at the Chicago Cultural Center on April 1, based on his […]
Gracing our town with five-part harmonies from heaven, four-time Grammy winner Lyle Lovett made a serious stop here with his all-strings acoustic band called Lyle Lovett and his Acoustic Group, presented by Arts & Lectures UCSB at Campbell Hall. One of 46 tour dates in a five-month spread across the country, he uses buses and […]
Montecito’s Erland Wanberg, Director of Musicology SB located at the Music Academy of the West (MAW), and John Lucchetti, CEO of Green Room Strategy, are producing a benefit concert with 100% of the proceeds going toward the Musicology’s free one-on-one music lessons to low income youth at the Santa Barbara Police Activities League teen center. […]
Dozen of local, national, and international dance artists are set to come together under one roof in Nebula Dance Lab’s sixth annual HH11 Dance Festival at Center Stage Theater this weekend (February 27-March 2). Artists both emerging and established present more than 30 different pieces over the course of the three performances, which include appearance, […]
The Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art features the works of 60 different artists with a wide range of artistic styles from minimalism to realism, pop to op, narrative to symbolism in “Contemporary Masters: Works on Paper from the Collection of the Art Museum of South Texas” from January 30-March 21, 2020. A free, public opening […]
If violinist-violist Sara Bashore hadn’t been craving cookies as a kid, she might never have made it to Montenegro. At least that’s what Bashore remembered about her first exposure to the violin at age five. “My parents took me to an orchestra concert and asked me if I was interested in any of the instruments,” […]
Hanzhi Wang wasn’t born an accordion player. But it was only a few years later at age six that the young Chinese girl fell in love with the instrument when she overheard it on the soundtrack of an Italian movie. “My father was watching it and I heard the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard […]
World-renowned cellist, composer, and curator Joshua Roman is an alumnus of the Music Academy of the West (MAW) since 2002. He sent out letters of inquiry around the U.S. to secure a space undisturbed for composing a 16-minute piece for the Cleveland Orchestra. Scott Reed, President and CEO of MAW, reached out to Ashley Woods […]
“It is a perhaps a little humiliating to us that we should have to wait till a stranger should come across the continent to reveal to us the beauties that lie at our door,” said the Reverend J.W. Hough at the library soiree in the Odd Fellows Building on State Street in September 1875. He […]
The Santa Barbara Historical Museum (SBHM) invited members to celebrate the season and see the opening of their latest exhibition, the Henry Chapman Ford (1828-1894) collection. Holiday cocktails and canapés set the festive tone along with lighting and white fabric “walls.” Deputy director Dacia Harwood said that many thanks go to sponsors Sharon and David […]
