Tag archives: Arts & Lectures
Uber philanthropist Sara Miller McCune‘s new Montecito manse was socially gridlocked when she hosted a dinner party for VIP patrons of UCSB’s popular Arts & Lectures program and the first guest of the 60th anniversary season, legendary trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Marsalis, 56, who has won nine Grammy awards […]
The calendar is crammed as the new arts season arrives in earnest, although the biggest place in the land is more of a warm-weather venue. That would be the Santa Barbara Bowl, where it’s actually, unironically, unlikely to rain when Alanis Morissette takes the stage on Friday, September 27, followed two days later by the […]
National Review editor, Los Angeles Times columnist, speaker, Fox News commentator, author, and teacher (for nearly a year he taught English to Czech citizens after the breakup of the Soviet Union), Jonah Goldberg is a product of Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Jonah’s father was Jewish; his mother Christian; Jonah was brought up Jewish. Some may […]
On the Verge (OTV), Santa Barbara native Kate Bergstrom‘s repertory theatre company founded in 2015 with a mission of marrying new work created by female and LGBTQ writers with the local community of actors, directors, producers, and theater-goers, is taking a slight detour for its fourth year. In place of presenting several different plays in […]
When someone from Los Angeles says to me, “What is there to do in Santa Barbara? They are inferring it’s such a small town. I always think, “What is there not to do?” We have our own symphony, our own ballet company, and our own opera company to name just a few. And then we […]
Get ready to sink into a lawn chair at the Santa Barbara County Courthouse Sunken Gardens – UCSB Arts & Lectures’s free Summer Film Series starts up again on Friday night, July 6. If you’ve been buoyed by Bond movies, stirred by silent film classics, or moved by dancing scenes in classic movie musicals in […]
UCSB’s popular Arts & Lectures program is celebrating its 60th anniversary with an eclectic program of 65 events, including 16 premieres and debuts. To launch the new season, which begins September 29 with music great Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra at the Granada, Celesta Billeci, Miller McCune executive director, hosted a […]
My favorite kind of music is Broadway, so I was in heaven at UCSB Arts & Lectures (A&L) last Granada performance for the season highlighting the world-renowned soprano Audra McDonald. She is the winner of a record-breaking six Tony Awards, two Grammy Awards, and an Emmy Award, not to mention being named one of Time […]
Soprano Audra McDonald, who has a record-breaking six Tony Awards, two Grammys, and an Emmy, was in top form when she appeared in the last Granada performance of the UCSB Arts & Lectures current season. New York-based McDonald, who received a National Medal of Arts in 2015, the highest honor for achievement in the arts, […]
Too many cooks spoil the broth goes the old adage, but culinary wizards were in abundance when UCSB Arts & Lectures threw a benefit gala at the Museum of History with Anthony Bourdain, host of CNN’s Parts Unknown. The 61-year-old, who flew in from Bali via Dubai for the 300-guest fete, gave an expletive-filled speech […]
UCSB Arts & Lectures debuted New York-based Mark Morris Dance Group’s colorful and energized Left Coast premiere of Sgt. Pepper at 50: Pepperland, which it had co-commissioned, at the Granada. The highly entertaining show is a collaboration with composer-arranger Ethan Iverson, who has taken six songs from the Beatles’ seminal 1967 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts […]
Popular Santa Barbara charity The Teddy Bear Cancer Foundation threw its first ever California Clam Bake at Stearns Wharf. The maritime masticatory moment, which was expected to raise $50,000, kicked off at the Natural History Museum’s Sea Center, with canapés by Miso Hungry, before moving to the Harbor Restaurant, a tiara’s toss away for a […]
To the Kimpton Goodland Hotel in Goleta for a UCSB Arts & Lectures reception for peripatetic New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. A winner of two Pulitzer Prizes and a recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University, the 58-year-old Harvard graduate has more followers on Twitter – 1.5 million – than any other print […]
Violinist Jennifer Koh has brought her three-part “Bach and Beyond” and the cutting edge “Bridge to Beethoven” recital series to Hahn Hall for several concerts with UCSB Arts & Lectures over the years. Now, the fearless fiddler is returning to town with her most ambitious endeavor to date: “Shared Madness”, a set of 30 short […]
Buddy Guy gave an over-the-top, full-on performance at the Granada Theater on March 16 to a sold-out crowd, as part of the UCSB Arts and Lectures program. At 81, with the energy of an 18-year-old, he shared his passion and music genius with a non-stop, 2-hour gig. Here in our midst was a wise respected […]
Superlatives are not sufficient to describe the Spanish National Dance Company’s performance of Swedish choreographer Johan Inger‘s Carmen at the Granada. The 39-year-old Madrid-based troupe, who last dazzled us six years ago, showed why the quintessentially Spanish work has become one of the most talked-about new ballets of the decade with Japan-born Kayoko Everhart dazzling […]
Pioneering winemaker Fred Brander was honored as Vintner of the Year at a socially gridlocked gala in aid of Direct Relief at the Ritz-Carlton Bacara. The biennial oenophile bash and wine auction, which attracted 600 guests and was emceed by The Bachelor host Chris Harrison, raised a hefty $1.2 million, with a third of the […]
Berlin-based organist Cameron Carpenter, who I first saw two years ago, was back in our Eden by the Beach for another UCSB Arts & Lectures Granada show. The maverick showman, the first organist nominated for a Grammy Award for a solo album, continues to smash the stereotypes of organists, organ, and classical music as a […]
As the Santa Barbara International Film Festival celebrated the debut of its 33rd year at the Arlington across the road, the Anti-Defamation League honored First Responders and SB County Search and Rescue with its third annual bash at Villa and Vine across the way. The 130-guest bash, chaired by Beth Katz, raised $10,000 toward the […]
Anthony Giardina‘s 2010 play The City of Conversation has proven to be even more prophetic than even he might have imagined. Set in Washington, D.C., during three important periods in recent American politics, the play spans nearly 30 years, from Fall of 1979 to January 2009, and traces the evolution of 1960s-raised Hester Ferris from […]
