Tag archives: Christmas Revels

Equinox Revelry
By Steven Libowitz   |   September 20, 2022

In recent years, Santa Barbara Revels has used the season change from summer to fall to offer its annual Equinox Concert, with a wide-ranging selection of music that marks its own transition from last year’s to this year’s productions of The Christmas Revels, the organization’s biggest event of the year. To that end, the Equinox […]

Honoring History
By Richard Mineards   |   December 28, 2021

A page from our Eden by the Beach’s own history comes to life when Yankee sailors meet Spanish Rancheros at Casa de la Guerra in the Christmas Revels at the Lobero Theatre. Based on actual events from the 1830s woven into a lavish theatrical experience, the Revels, now in its 14th season, featured a company […]

Revels Redux: Original Show Comes Back
By Steven Libowitz   |   December 21, 2021

More than a dozen community companies around the country present Christmas Revels performances this December, including such places as Lebanon, New Hampshire; Boulder, Colorado; and Oakland, each of which reworks shows created by the flagship company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The shows bring together people of all ages and backgrounds — both on stage and in […]

‘The Last Honky Tonk Hero’
By Steven Libowitz   |   September 21, 2021

We’ll leave it up to the listener to decide if the new CD from Mike Dawson & The Smokin Kills lives up to its title. But we can tell you that the guy fronting the band is the real deal: Dawson is the former longtime DJ, music director, and producer at KTYD, Santa Barbara’s classic […]

Revels’ Pandemic Promise: Join Us (Virtually) and Be Joyous
By Steven Libowitz   |   December 24, 2020

Every year, the December performances of Santa Barbara Revels are meant to mark the winter solstice, which represents the shortest day of the year, the deepest dive into darkness before emerging back into the light. So perhaps it was fitting that my conversation with Susan Keller, founder of and still the main force in the […]

Reveling Into the New Year
By Richard Mineards   |   December 27, 2018

Santa Barbara Revels, presenting its 11th anniversary production at the Lobero, moved to Ireland this year after its Alta California Rancho period piece in 2017. “We wanted to honor the strength and courage of the intrepid Irish emigrants who left their homeland in the early 1900s, specially those who might have traveled on the S.S. […]

Shredding the Dream: 4Qs with Alastair Greene
By Steven Libowitz   |   December 14, 2017

Santa Barbara-born, Berklee-trained blues guitarist-singer-songwriter Alastair Greene has been plying his trade professionally for 20 years now, but the last seven or so has seen him put his own trio on the back burner in favor of a lucrative role as sideman to Alan Parsons, one of progressive-rock’s progenitors, who also lives locally. But now […]