Tag archives: jazz
Two of our favorite pastimes have plenty to offer on their own. Drinking great wine enhances everything from consumption to conversation. Listening to music we love can lift our spirits and set the mood. Both also make us feel good. But what about putting these two actions together? And I’m talking about beyond just turning […]
It’s interesting that one person getting water from the Montecito Creek Water Company, Mr. Jon Emanuel, and not the company itself, responded to my letter advocating return of the Montecito hot springs by the ruins (Cliff Spring and Barn Springs) to the people. He claims I said things that are “factually incorrect,” yet he characterizes […]
To interview Charles Lloyd, you’ve got to be willing to abandon your list of questions and simply surrender to wherever it is that the master musician wants to go. The saxophonist’s career dates back to the 1960s when the Memphis-born musician was part of the San Francisco scene, sharing bills at the Fillmore with the […]
“New York City is back!” I exclaimed to Gianni Valenti over a drink at Birdland, the 70-plus-year-old jazz club and theater cabaret that he’s owned for the past three-plus decades, on 44th Street in New York City. “It’s half back,” he corrected me, adding that his longtime landlord was very understanding of the economic climate […]
Peter Clark always chose good, and “quietly” did good, never publicly sharing his many good deeds for others. The Montecito Journal’s society tribute to Peter was excellent, however I feel compelled as his decades’ long “jazz mom friend” to add to this exceptional man’s legacy from observations and what he shared over coffee near his […]
As a smooth jazz star, saxophonist Dave Koz has always been acutely aware of audience response, as the genre can often be about providing the sort of soundtrack that people are seeking in their lives. But nearly two years away from performing in front of the public largely due to the COVID pandemic really crystallized […]
Jazz really can change the world; at least two of UCSB’s most accomplished professors think so. Dr. Jeffrey Stewart and Dr. Victor Rios have just been named as the newest recipients of the MacArthur Foundation Chairs — the same prestigious foundation known for their “Genius Grants.” Stewart, a professor of Black Studies and winner of […]
Last October, Santa Barbara City College’s Jim Mooy used the Jamulus audio platform and live-streamed videos of each performer generated via Zoom to direct a synchronous audio and video stream of a university ensemble performance of SBCC’s Lunch Break Jazz Ensemble concert. This week, Mooy lends his expertise to his counterparts at UCSB’s Music Department, […]
Westmont Music kicked off its spring student showcase series with a pandemic-proof performance of Gabriel Fauré’s sublime “Requiem” in its annual Masterworks Concert. Westmont found a new space for its spring reading of the piece, with the widely spaced singers vocalizing from the bleachers high above the orchestra located on the track at the college’s […]
The election will be three days in the rear-view mirror when The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra Septet with Wynton Marsalis performing “The Sounds of Democracy” streams for free as part of UCSB Arts & Lectures’ Thematic Learning Initiative, its community conversation arm in conjunction with events. Led by trumpeter-composer Wynton Marsalis and featuring seven […]
Westmont cross-country first-year students Caleb Mettler and Anneline Breytenbach, Golden State Athletic Conference Athletes of the Month for October, lead their teams into the GSAC Championship on Saturday, November 7, at William Jessup University in Rocklin. Mettler, a San Clemente High School graduate, claimed second place in race two of The Master’s Invitational on September […]
If you’ve attended any of the hundreds of concerts performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the last 36 years, there’s a strong chance you would have glimpsed the orchestra’s longest standing member. His name is Jack Cousin and he has been a pillar of the orchestra’s nine-strong bass section since 1974, when he joined […]
The Santa Barbara Jazz Society doesn’t have much in its own archives to air during our shelter-in-place era, but the folks who run it are offering some links to fill in the gaps until the nonprofit can stage its next monthly concert at SOhO after the all clear order. If live is king, you’ll want […]
Montecito-raised musician Joss Jaffe, who basically created his own sub-genre of dub-mantra by combining the rhythms of reggae with chanting and world jazz, is back in town for a final show with frequent partner Johanna Beekman. Jaffe, a Top-Ten New Age Billboard chanting artist whose four albums have been critically acclaimed, teams with Beekman, whose […]
Elsewhere in pop music, drummer Sammy Miller’s mission to bring jazz to the people via the young members of his seven-piece Congregation, finds the “evangelists of swing” making a proselytizing visit to Santa Barbara, where the Grammy Award-nominated, Juilliard-trained Miller and Co. will draw on a century of American songs to share the power of […]
It was another high note when the Women’s Auxiliary of the Music Academy of the West hosted its second annual benefit Music in the Gardens on the Miraflores campus, with a record 400 guests raising around $80,000 to benefit the community access program, which provides subsidized and free tickets to MAW events. Themed American Rhythms, […]
The UCSB Jazz Ensemble combos directed by Dr. Jon Nathan held a three-hour jazz lunch concert at SOhO on Sunday, December 2. The jam was sold out, with standing room only the entire time. Kudos to SOhO for packing the club on a busy Sunday afternoon during the holidays. The gig started off with the […]
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 […]
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 […]
Montecito music man Peter Clark has retired as president of the 23-year-old Santa Barbara Jazz Society to be replaced by local artist Natalie Wilson. Peter, 80, was accompanied by his glamorous wife, Gloria, when he made the announcement to 200 club members at SOhO, where the group holds its monthly concerts, with the Los Angeles-based […]
