Tag archives: music
Concerts in the Park is a long-cherished Santa Barbara institution, a summertime frolic featuring free live music on the Great Meadow in Chase Palm Park along Santa Barbara’s waterfront on Cabrillo Blvd. The gently-sloping hill facing the permanent concrete stage (often the setting for weddings and other private functions) provides sensational sightlines and surroundings with […]
When Paige Cameron enrolled at Northwestern in her home state of Illinois to study vocal performance, the plan was to sing her way to stardom. “I really thought I was going to be an opera singer,” said Cameron, who goes by either she or they and has recently decided to lop off her hyphenated last […]
The ever-entertaining Takács Quartet was in superb form at the sold out Lobero as they performed in the first week of the Music Academy of the West’s 77th Summer Festival. The Fab Four – violinists Edward Dusinberre and Harumi Rhodes, cellist András Fejér, and Grammy-winning violist Richard O’Neill, formerly with Camerata Pacifica – are currently […]
Maybe the Music Academy of the West had some unanticipated smarts in scheduling the annual Percussion Fest for the first Saturday of the season, just four days into the 2024 Summer Festival. With the fellows flying in from San Francisco, Cleveland, Houston, and New York and driving up from L.A. they’d all have to arrive […]
You might say Navasard Hakobyan had a pretty good summer in Santa Barbara last year. The Armenian baritone not only made his debut as Marcello, one of the principal roles in La Boheme at the Granada, he also secured the most coveted and longstanding prize of the festival in the Music Academy’s 2023 Marilyn Horne […]
Preparing for her final year at Berklee College of Music, Makena Tate – a Crane Country Day School and San Marcos High School alum – reflects on how her relationship with music has changed over the years. Dear Montecito, Last month I Ubered to a gig and the driver immediately asked: “Why do you like […]
Your Society Invites reporter is giving some love to a cool and friendly live jazz club, The Grape in Ventura. I interviewed the owners and stayed for the Derek Frank Band performance on Saturday, May 25. This locals’ hang has the look of a throwback LA-NYC jazz club interior and the chops to showcase ear-candy […]
Just days before the kickoff of its 77th summer festival, the Miraflores campus of the Music Academy of the West was packed with 225 supporters for the “Magic of the Music Academy: A New Era” gala with a special solo performance by top cellist Joshua Roman in Hahn Hall. Roman, 40, attended the academy in […]
There have been moves afoot at the Santa Barbara Symphony with a new head of development and marketing and three new board members. Paul Bradford brings 30 years of sales and marketing experience to his new role, as he aims to boost sales and donations through patron growth and engagement Previously he served in key […]
In just about every city across America, summer is when the classical music season grinds to a halt, with both professional and university institutions going on hiatus until the fall. But for more than three-quarters of a century, Santa Barbara has had the great distinction of having two months at the beginning of summer bring […]
The Music Academy of the West’s annual Summer Gala, set for Saturday, June 1, not only serves as an elegant appetizer to the enviable eight-week festival that follows, but also an official welcome to new Music Academy President and CEO Shauna Quill. The 2024 gala, appropriately titled “A New Era,” features an Italian-themed culinary journey […]
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 […]
The Santa Barbara Music Club Scholarships – which regularly produces free concerts featuring professional and other classical musicians in town – has been awarding scholarships to instrumental and vocal music students from Santa Barbara County. The scholarships provide a measure of support, aid, and encouragement to students from local schools and teaching studios. The hope […]
Opera Santa Barbara’s 2024-25 season doesn’t start until November, but the opportunity to purchase single (non-subscription) tickets to OSB’s three productions for less than $30 ends with the month of May. The season features Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci (November 8 & 10), Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (February 21 & 23) and Donizetti’s The Daughter of the […]
It was certainly theater in the round when top bassist Nik West, 35, featured in the Granada’s Centennial on Stage with a 90-minute energized show of funk, soul, and rock. The singer-songwriter from Phoenix, Arizona, who was recognized as “the bass icon of this generation” by Rolling Stone, West has performed with Quincy Jones Productions, […]
Westmont alumnus Dave Talbott (piano) leads the annual All-City Hymn Sing on Sunday, June 2, at 3 pm at Shoreline Community Church, 935 San Andres St. Talbott, the resident musician at the Mount Hermon Christian Conference Center for four decades, will lead attendees in an hour of singing everyone’s favorite hymns. Talbott, who lives at […]
Camerata Pacifica’s season closer was a blending of Phillip Glass’s repetitive structures in composition with classical artist Frank Zappa’s use of sampling music as background topped by key instruments in a composition. A few works had audible hints of a Lydian diminished scale combined with an auxiliary blues diminished mode in a contemporary classical resolve […]
Natalie Merchant, the New York-bred singer-songwriter who a lifetime ago was the lead singer and lyricist for the alt.rock faves 10,000 Maniacs (1981-93) before embarking on an even more successful solo career, returns to town to perform at the Santa Barbara Bowl on May 23. Merchant’s latest album, 2023’s Keep Your Courage, continues to prove […]
Although there’s only one degree of separation between Santa Barbara and Kevin Bacon, the star of the movie Footloose – soundtrack superstar Kenny Loggins, on the other hand, has lived in town for decades – neither will be involved in Lights Up! Theatre Company’s production of the stage musical this weekend. But what we do […]
Santa Barbara Symphony concluded its latest season commemorating the 100th anniversary of Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue @ 100: Jazz Comes to the Symphony” concert at the Granada. The show also featured fan favorite The Marcus Roberts Trio, part of a residing artist collaboration with the nearby Lobero Theatre. Marcus Robert also performed his Gershwin-inspired composition […]
