Tag archives: Lobero Theatre

Asleep at the Wheel: Ray Benson Still Driving Western Swing band’s Sound
By Steven Libowitz   |   June 6, 2023

Asleep at the Wheel was just a country western band playing regular mountain music when Ray Benson co-founded the group in Paw Paw, West Virginia, back in 1970 – but after discovering Western Swing pioneer Bob Wills a few years later, the band never looked back.  “I was 19 when we started out, but as […]

Climbing Out of Isolation, Aerial Dance Company Flies Again
By Steven Libowitz   |   May 30, 2023

Credit Covid as an uninvited collaborator for Ninette Paloma in creating her new evening-length aerial dance work making its debut this weekend. That’s because La Escalada (The Climb) grew out of both the restrictions and the sense of isolation engendered by the pandemic – as well as Paloma’s Santa Barbara Centre for Aerial Dance’s new […]

Block Party with a Twist
By Richard Mineards   |   May 30, 2023

Astoundingly it was 63 years ago that America and the world learned how to do The Twist, as performed by a fresh-faced 17-year-old Ernest Evans, known to his millions of fans as Chubby Checker. In the last six decades the Twist has been continually in and out of the charts and at the weekend, as […]

Check(er) Mate Sill Twisting
By Steven Libowitz   |   May 23, 2023

It’s startling to realize that while the Lobero Theatre has been a beacon for the arts in Santa Barbara for 150 years, Chubby Checker has been around for more than half of those years, and is still going strong. As part of the Lobero’s year-long Ovation celebration, the now-81-year-old 1960s rocker who propelled “The Twist” […]

Sounds Around Town: Live Music for the Ages 
By Steven Libowitz   |   May 23, 2023

If you have the inclination and the stamina, you can catch live performances from some of the oldest members of the musical community and several of its youngest on a single Saturday this weekend. The Prime Time Band, a group of amateur musicians whose ages span from 40 to 90-plus but definitely skews toward the […]

The Stories of Sutton
By Steven Libowitz   |   May 16, 2023

Jazz singer Tierney Sutton’s Friday, May 12, show at the Lobero Theatre, the nine-time Grammy nominee’s first concert at her self-professed favorite venue in the world, is actually two concerts in one. Sutton – who in the interim not only released a sequel to her 2014 collaboration with classically trained Parisian guitarist-arranger Serge Merlaud, but […]

Days in a Chamber Daze
By Richard Mineards   |   May 16, 2023

The three-day Lobero Theatre Chamber Music Project with two concerts at the historic venue and a third at the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum under artistic and music director Heiichiro Ohyama, former maestro of the now defunct Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, kicked off in fine style with works by Dvořák and Bruckner. The impressive players […]

Excellent chamber music with the Elite Eight
By Steven Libowitz   |   May 9, 2023

Three long years after the original plan, the Lobero Theatre Chamber Music Project is finally getting the chance to perform its first series of concerts in a full-fledged festival format, launching what is sure to be one of the classical music highlights of the year. The project grew out of the ashes of the Santa […]

Divots Over Dinner
By Richard Mineards   |   May 9, 2023

Divotees were out in force when Lobero Theatre Associates, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary, hosted a Dinner & Divots gala at the Santa Barbara Polo Club in honor of the historic theater’s 150th anniversary. The event hosted 190 guests and raised more than $65,000. The bash, co-chaired by Paige Beard and Heidi Merrick, was […]

An Opera of Mythical Proportions
By Richard Mineards   |   May 9, 2023

The first opera I ever saw was Wagner’s Die Walküre on a school trip to the Sadler’s Wells Opera at London’s Coliseum in 1970, a three-act production lasting nearly five hours, which almost put me off the art form for life. Thankfully Puccini and Verdi enticed me back, so it was particularly interesting attending Opera […]

Motown Magic
By Richard Mineards   |   April 11, 2023

The audience at the Lobero was transported back to the Swinging ‘60s when Los Angeles-based tribute band The Magical Music of Motown returned to the historic venue after appearing in our Eden by the Beach last May. The vibrant and colorful two-hour show paid homage to the legendary Detroit-based record label. Founded by now 93-year-old […]

Harmonizing with Ladysmith Black Mambazo
By Richard Mineards   |   March 14, 2023

After the Soweto Gospel Choir and Step Afrika! at UCSB’s Campbell Hall, courtesy of the Arts & Lectures program, it was time for the venerable Lobero, celebrating its 150th anniversary, to host Ladysmith Black Mambazo, a nine-member Durban-based South African male choral group, who have won five Grammy awards. The highly entertaining troupe, founded in […]

A Dreamer in Sound
By Steven Libowitz   |   March 14, 2023

Charles Lloyd reported that he wasn’t in good shape when we connected by phone last week. But it wasn’t a physical issue ailing the octogenarian saxophonist-composer who back in the late 1960s enjoyed one of the first million-selling jazz albums. It was a spiritual sadness after hearing that Wayne Shorter had died overnight.  “We were […]

4Qs: Forever Young with “Get Together” Singer
By Steven Libowitz   |   February 7, 2023

If Jesse Colin Young never sang another song besides “Get Together,” his place in rock history would be assured. Indeed, the ‘60s feel-good, quasi-protest song is so iconic that FestForums has borrowed it as the title of their tribute concert to the late producers of Woodstock and Newport Folk & Jazz festivals. Young will both […]

Dancing to the Keepers of the Flame
By Steven Libowitz   |   February 7, 2023

Dana Lawton has admitted to being obsessed with the Farallon Islands and the swarthy keepers and families who served as lighthouse keepers there back in the mid-1800s, working the Fresnel lens that warned ships approaching San Francisco to stay away from the fog-shrouded rocky islands. Fortunately, Lawton is a choreographer who also runs a Bay […]

The Mystery of Lobero’s Eagle
By Hercule Beresford   |   January 31, 2023

by Hercule Beresford Italian-born Giuseppe (José) Lobero loved his adopted country so much that he opened his opera house, the first theater in Santa Barbara, on February 22, George Washington’s birthday. With such deep patriotic sentiment, it seems likely that it was he who hung a symbol of our nation above the proscenium arch of […]

Abundance After the Winter Dry Spell
By Steven Libowitz   |   January 10, 2023

The arts and entertainment scene in Santa Barbara stays particularly fallow in the current year-spanning four-week period, as none of the major producing organizations in town are staging events between mid-December and mid-January, save for the Santa Barbara Symphony’s annual New Year’s Eve concert. The Lobero is the first downtown to spring back into action, […]

Ending on a High-land Note
By Richard Mineards   |   December 27, 2022

Tartan ruled supreme at the Lobero when Santa Barbara Revels founder and artistic director Susan Keller staged her 13th Yuletide production, a Scottish celebration of the Winter Solstice. Set in an imposing baronial hall in the 18th century, the entertaining show opened with a Scottish overture played by the Ben Nevis Brass Ensemble and the […]

A Christmas Choral
By Richard Mineards   |   December 27, 2022

Santa Barbara Choral Society, under veteran conductor Jo Anne Wasserman, was in fine form with its eighth annual Hallelujah Project at the Lobero, which also included Sing! program choral students from the Music Academy and pajama-clad president Scott Reed in a rocking chair reciting ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas. Accompanied by an orchestra, the enthusiastic […]

A Champagne Tea
By Richard Mineards   |   December 20, 2022

Lobero Theatre Associates, an auxiliary supporting the historic theater’s foundation, celebrated its 50th anniversary with a champagne-soaked tea for 75 guests at the Santa Barbara Club, which raised $5,000 as Swedish pianist Fredrik Rosvall serenaded the cultured crowd with traditional carols. Among the supporters at the bash, co-chaired by Leslie Haight and Emily Johnson, were […]