Tag archives: music

Cultural gridlock reigned at the Santa Barbara Club when UCSB Arts & Lectures held its new 63rd season reveal party with 150 guests. “It has all been very challenging,” said Miller McCune Executive Director Celesta Billeci. “There have been many unknown hurdles during the pandemic. But we are now standing on the other side. We […]

Opera Santa Barbara ended its season in grand style with a lavish production of Verdi’s 1853 classic La Traviata at the Granada, last performed in our Eden by the Beach 11 years ago. Soprano Anya Matanovic was superb as the titular Fallen Woman with her beloved played rousingly by tenor Nathan Granner in the three-act […]

The Marjorie Luke Theatre is proud to present The ShapeShifters band collective as they celebrate Solstice at The Marjorie Luke Theatre on June 25th beginning at 7 pm, located at 721 East Cota Street.  The evening will feature a two-set concert composed of Santa Barbara’s premier musicians and vocalists accompanied by a courtyard celebration with […]

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 […]

Grand opera is returning to the Granada Theatre. After Opera Santa Barbara’s (OSB) two-plus years filled with ways to creatively cope with the COVID pandemic that ranged from virtual performances, to two Concerts in Your Car outdoor staged adaptations (that included, appropriately, a version of Carmen) and a season of smaller, shorter one-acts, reworkings, and […]

With public performances back in vogue now that the pandemic has eased its stranglehold, at least for the time being, Quire of Voyce’s director Nathan Kreitzer is thrilled to be programming performances at St. Anthony’s Seminary again. Following a special Christmas recital, the a cappella choir is returning to the acoustically stunning hall at the […]

Dancing lights, clay formations, and wiggling dresses – just some of the many wonders being worked on at UCSB’s Media Arts & Technology Program (MAT). Attention techies x media artists (and just anyone curious): It is time for the annual MAT Grad shows featuring the latest inventions from their hardworking graduate students.  We recently attended […]

The Santa Barbara Gay Men’s Chorus (SBGMC) will give our town its second concert on Monday, May 23, at 7:30 pm at the First United Methodist Church, 305 East Anapamu Street. Tickets are on sale now and at the door. The concert titled “Tomorrows: Songs For a Brighter Future!” is a one-hour, no intermission program […]

Lots of locals who have lived here long enough fondly remember the single summer pianist Orion Weiss spent in Montecito as a fellow at Music Academy of the West in 2000. Not only because the then-20-year-old pianist captured the prestigious Concerto Competition back when there was no contest just for the pianists. Weiss also won […]

Back in 2019, veteran UCSB dance professor Valerie Huston and Arizona State University’s dance faculty member Carley Conder teamed up to create Avian for UCSB’s dance students. This casual piece was inspired by Huston overhearing two students talking about a class they were taking called The Mathematics of Origami and featured nine-foot origami birds above […]

Peace and love were on the musical menu when the 74-year-old Santa Barbara Choral Society performed a Pax + Amare concert at the First Presbyterian Church under veteran conductor JoAnne Wasserman. Latvian baritone soloist Valdis Jansons, a voice coach at UCSB, sang in both pieces – French composer Maurice Duruflé’s 1947 “Requiem” and Ralph Vaughan […]

Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet mesmerized at the Granada when they performed for two consecutive nights as part of UCSB’s Arts & Lectures program. The magnificent company under Scottish artistic director Ashley Wheater kicked off the first night with Liam Scarlett’s “Vespertine,” originally created for the Norwegian National Ballet in 2015 and premiering with the Joffrey three […]

It was a night on the tiles when Dan and Meg Burnham hosted a Crescendo bash for Santa Barbara Symphony supporters at their penthouse aerie above the Granada Theatre to celebrate the orchestra’s Fandango Picante concert under maestro Nir Kabaretti. Violin superstar Anne Akiko Meyers performed music by legendary composer Arturo Marquez during the Mexican […]

Santa Barbara-based Camerata Pacifica has appointed Jonathan Weedman to its board. He has more than 30 years of extensive professional experience working in the corporate, nonprofit, and community sectors, and was the sixth executive director for the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles. From 1996 to 2016 he served as senior Vice President for the […]

Jazz is about a lot of things, not the least of which is the ability to improvise in connection with both the music and the other instrumentalists. That’s a Marcus Roberts Trio specialty, as the long-term partnership featuring pianist Roberts, drummer Jason Marsalis, and bassist Rodney Jordan share equally in shaping performances via changes in […]

To UCSB’s Campbell Hall to see the talented Danish String Quartet perform part two of its four-year-old Doppelgänger Project, supported by the college’s Arts & Lectures program, as well as New York’s Carnegie Hall. The project pairs world premieres from four renowned composers with chamber music masterpieces by Schubert, including “Death and the Maiden” and […]

Baubles, bangles, beads, and bandanas were de rigueur when Santa Barbara Choral Society hosted a Groovy Gala at the Rockwood Woman’s Club, with 100 Woodstock-garbed guests raising around $50,000. Co-chairs Margo Callis and Debra Stewart gushed: “It’s so wonderful to be back. Music pulls everyone’s soul like nothing else!” Veteran music director JoAnne Wasserman, with […]

It was an evening of decidedly high note when Lebanese-born soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian performed in a Glorious and Free concert at the Lobero, part of CAMA’s – the Community Arts Music Association – Masterseries. The performance of Romani-inspired songs and operetta arias featured works by Dvorak, Brahms, Lehar, Salman, and Yvain sung effortlessly by the […]

As British cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason had performed at their royal wedding at historic St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, in 2018 and watched by two billion people globally, it was hoped that Prince Harry and wife Meghan Markle might attend his entertaining concert with his pianist sister, Isata, at UCSB’s Campbell Hall, part of the popular Arts […]

Also emerging from the pandemic for its first live theatrical production in 30 months, Out of the Box (OOB) is reviving a three-decade-old work as well, in this case tick, tick…Boom! (TTB), originally a semi-autobiographical one-man show that Jonathan Larson created in the early 1990s before his Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning Rent. Coincidentally, TTB […]