Tag archives: music festival

Ojai Festival Opens 
By Steven Libowitz   |   June 4, 2024

Pianist and conductor Mitsuko Uchida, Musical America’s 2022 Artist of the Year and a Grammy nominee in 2023, serves as music director of this year’s Ojai Music Festival, the 78th edition of four days of musical brainstorming in an enchanted setting amid audiences eagerly anticipating challenge and discovery. The 2024 Ojai Festival takes place June […]

Monterey on Tour: Sands of Time
By Steven Libowitz   |   January 31, 2023

Taking the famed Monterey Jazz Festival out on its official tour for a third successive road trip (2020-22 were dormant) is just the latest MJF honor for pianist Christian Sands, a two-time Grammy nominee and former child prodigy who started playing professionally at 10. MJF is celebrating its 65th year as one of the world’s […]

Go Tell It on the Mountain 
By Steven Libowitz   |   November 22, 2022

Reggae on the Mountain (ROTM) was a charming hometown festival for its Topanga Canyon co-founders before relocating to an expansive site in the Malibu hills for its 10th anniversary. After a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, ROTM is on the move again, taking up residency at Live Oak Camp at the top of San […]

Music Academy Celebrates 75th in Community Concert
By Steven Libowitz   |   June 21, 2022

Conductor Donato Cabrera and Music Academy of the West (MAW) vocal pianist John Churchwell met in 2003, the first of two summers Donato spent at MAW as assistant conductor for the annual opera. The two, who live near each other in the Bay Area, became fast friends and visit each other frequently. In fact, Cabrera […]

Sum’MAW of 75
By Steven Libowitz   |   June 14, 2022

The Music Academy of the West’s return to its normal extremely event-packed eight-week summer music festival in 2022 happily coincides with a major milestone for the institute headquartered right here in Montecito. If previous partnerships with the New York Philharmonic and the London Symphony Orchestra haven’t already done so, MAW’s 75th anniversary season truly places […]

Singing Kismet’s Praises
By Mark Leisure   |   November 22, 2021

Theater came roaring back to life in town since last we published these pages known as the Sentinel, with every local company save for Ventura’s Rubicon offering something to savor. I caught three of the productions, including the biggest of them all in the revival of Kismet,executive produced and presented by philanthropist/publisher Sara Miller McCune. […]

Immediate Need
By Steven Libowitz   |   November 9, 2021

It’s very possible you may never have heard of Waddy Wachtel much less of his band The Immediate Family, who return to the Lobero Theatre on Saturday, November 6. But there’s little doubt that you are intimately familiar with Wachtel’s guitar work and that of his band mates Danny Kortchmar (guitars), Leland Sklar (bass), and […]

Live Oak Music Festival Gets Radio-active
By Steven Libowitz   |   June 18, 2020

After spending more than a quarter century happily ensconced at the campground halfway up the San Marcos Pass that gave the festival its name, the Live Oak Music Festival that takes place over Father’s Day weekend every year packed up to return to its roots in San Luis Obispo two summers ago. Now, in the […]

Persevering Through the Pandemic with Performances
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 9, 2020

The stated purpose of the Lois & Walter Capps Project is “Connecting our community through authentic and essential dialogue,” but its mission comes down to an even simpler three-word mantra, said president and executive director Todd Capps: “Bringing Us Together.” That encompasses all of the project’s enterprises from Common Table – which began a few […]

Folk, Funk, and Family Fun at Live Oak
By Steven Libowitz   |   June 14, 2018

More than one of the long-time staffers at the Live Oak Music Festival told me that their favorite part of the three-day musical mash-up that serves as public radio station KCBX’s second-biggest fundraiser of the year was the feeling of being part of a family. Considering that I was forwarded four different names of people […]