Tag archives: Arts & Lectures

Finding Passion in Playing Through Tragedy
By Steven Libowitz   |   March 14, 2019

The last week of February was a tough one for Anne-Sophie Mutter. Not only did the famed violinist lose her former husband and longtime musical partner when André Previn died on February 28, but she also came down with influenza, forcing postponement of the Los Angeles opening concert in her upcoming five-city American tour, making […]

Annie Leibovitz Live
By Lynda Millner   |   March 14, 2019

The Arlington Theatre was packed with folks eager to hear from the iconic photographer Annie Leibovitz. After seeing her work many years ago in Vanity Fair and Vogue, I was too. UCSB Arts & Lectures was presenting the program. Annie began her career with the Rolling Stones in 1970 while she was still a student […]

Making the Rounds
By Richard Mineards   |   March 14, 2019

The mad social whirl was at full throttle when UCSB Arts & Lectures hosted parties for guest speakers at the Granada and Campbell Hall. The first was held at the charming Montecito residence of Audrey and Tim Fisher, the former home of actor James Brolin, for global photographer James Balog, who spoke about his new […]

CADA at Coral
By Richard Mineards   |   March 14, 2019

Social gridlock reigned at the Coral Casino’s La Pacifica ballroom when CADA – the Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse – hosted an underwriting party for its annual Amethyst Ball at the Ritz-Carlton Bacara next month. The beachside bash attracted 90 well heeled guests and raised around $100,00 to cover costs associated with the glittering […]

Twenty Years of Tony’s Tacos
By Richard Mineards   |   February 28, 2019

Los Arroyos, the popular Mexican eatery on Coast Village Road, is celebrating 20 years in business. Owner Tony Arroyo opened his first location in downtown Santa Barbara on West Figueroa Street in 1999 and launched his outlet in our rarefied enclave in 2004. The chain now has branches in Camarillo and Goleta, with a nosheteria […]

Leadership in Turbulent Times
By Richard Mineards   |   February 28, 2019

World-renowned presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times bestselling author Doris Kearns Goodwin packed the Granada when she spoke about Leadership in Turbulent Times, the title of her seventh book published last year. The tome is a culmination of Goodwin’s five-decade career of studying American presidents focusing on Abraham Lincoln, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, […]

Puppy Power: Collective Confers Jazz-plus
By Steven Libowitz   |   February 21, 2019

Trying to pigeonhole Snarky Puppy into a single genre would be a fool’s errand, but suffice it to say that the three-time Grammy Award-winning Brooklyn-based collective that features a revolving cast of up to 25 musicians makes music that’s at once heady, heart-centered, and headed for the dance floor, an amalgam they call “music for […]

Quartet Kills
By Richard Mineards   |   February 21, 2019

Grammy Award nominees the Danish String Quartet, visiting our Eden by the Beach for the fourth time, gave two very different performances for their UCSB Arts & Lectures appearances. The fab four – violinists Frederik Oland and Rune Tonsgaard Sorensen, cellist Fredrik Schoyen Sjolin and violist Asbjorn Norgaard – kicked off their latest visit at […]

Wild About Wildlife
By Richard Mineards   |   February 14, 2019

Montecito animal activist Gretchen Lieff and Beanie Baby billionaire Ty Warner‘s luxury beachside club, the Coral Casino, hosted a boffo bash for the Santa Barbara Wildlife Care Network, which last year helped 3,297 animals in distress. The event, Love Our Wildlife, was a “friend raiser” to also help garner funds for the 31-year-old organization’s busiest […]

Trocks en Pointe
By Richard Mineards   |   February 7, 2019

It was a delightful night of high camp when Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo performed a hilarious program at the packed Granada, part of the of the popular UCSB Arts & Lectures series. Music by Chopin, Verdi, Glazunov accompanied the balletic high jinx. Having seen the 45-year-old company a number of times in New […]

An Evening with Albright
By Lynda Millner   |   January 31, 2019

UCSB Arts & Lectures presented “An Evening with Madeleine Albright” to a packed house at the Granada Theatre. In case you don’t remember, she was the first woman Secretary of State and the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government in 1997. Currently she is chair of Albright Stonebridge Group, which is a […]

Albright, Albright, Albright
By Richard Mineards   |   January 31, 2019

It was Albright on the night when America’s first female U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright spoke to a sold-out Granada audience as part of the popular UCSB Arts & Lectures series. Albright, 81, who became a U.S. citizen in 1957 after leaving her native Czechoslovakia, served in the White House from 1997 to 2001 […]

Jon Batiste Lecture & Concert Review
By Joanne A Calitri   |   January 24, 2019

Musician Jon Batiste held an afternoon open interview and evening solo concert at UCSB on January 11, via the Arts & Lectures Programming, in conjunction with the UCSB Music Department, sponsored by KCSB FM, KCBX FM, and Potek Wines. Batiste honed his chops at age six as the drummer in a family band and tuned […]

Arts & Lectures
By Lynda Millner   |   December 20, 2018

After 60 years, UCSB Arts & Lectures is still churning out dozens of events a year. One of the latest is “An Evening with Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keen” at Campbell Hall. They have performed in Santa Barbara before and the house was packed this time too. Lovett is a four-time Grammy Award winner […]

Me Too Movement
By Lynda Millner   |   December 6, 2018

Arts & Lectures from UCSB recently presented a long-time worker for the “Me Too” movement, Tarana Burke. She is from the Bronx, New York and the movement isn’t new to her. She’s been working in the social justice field for 25 years, particularly with girls who are brown and black and have suffered sexual abuse […]

Grateful Fed
By Richard Mineards   |   November 22, 2018

Social gridlock reigned when Calcagno & Hamilton, the Coast Village Road realtors, hosted its third annual Gratitude party with 200 guests spilling out on the ritzy rue’s sidewalk. The company, which recently opened a Goleta office, pulled out all the stops for the bustling bash, catered by Richard Maxwell‘s The Bending Fork, and featuring ace […]

Jazzy Jeff
By Richard Mineards   |   November 15, 2018

Actor Jeff Goldblum, who has starred in many of Hollywood’s top-grossing films, including Jurassic Park and Independence Day, showed off his musical talents at UCSB’s Campbell Hall when his Mildred Snitzer Orchestra entertained a packed house. An accomplished pianist, Goldblum, 66, and his jazz band of friends play regularly at L.A.’s Rockwell Table and Stage […]

Miliband-Aid
By Richard Mineards   |   November 15, 2018

Former British foreign secretary David Miliband was the center of attraction at the historic Montecito estate, Val Verde, when UCSB Arts & Lectures hosted a pre-talk bash for the ex-politician and Oxford graduate at the sprawling home of hedge fund manager and New York Times cruciverbalist Pete Muller and his wife, Jillian, who bought the […]

Reaching Out: Burke Speaks at UCSB
By Joanne A Calitri   |   November 15, 2018

Tarana Burke, social justice activist and senior director of the Brooklyn-based Girls for Gender Equity, presented at the UCSB Arts & Lectures on November 5 about the “Me Too” (#metoo) movement. She spoke in a straightforward fashion for an hour, and outlined how and why the organization called “Me Too” started, where they are now […]

Mass Menagerie
By Richard Mineards   |   October 25, 2018

The venerable Granada Theatre has been having a busy week. Cirque Mechanics, an inventive play on circuses of old, kicked off the week in a UCSB Arts & Lectures show, “42 ft: A Menagerie of Mechanical Marvels.” The innovative 80-minute show had machines interacting with acrobats, dancers, jugglers, and contortionists, much to the delight of […]