Tag archives: music
By Maria W. Long “I don’t know you, but I love you.” – Sir Paul McCartney (Aug. 26, 2025) …And the crowd loved him back! Sir Paul McCartney’s Friday night appearance at the Santa Barbara Bowl was the most spectacular show many of us would see in our lifetime. Lines stretched down the block beginning […]
Heading east on a plane, Pete Muller calls within moments in response to my text to talk about his new album and special concert at SOhO. It’s a trip that combines his two passionate pursuits (apart from his family); spending some time at PDT Partners – the Wall Street hedge fund Muller founded and whose model […]
Camerata Pacifica, the Santa Barbara-based chamber music collective, has an international reputation for both exceptional artistry and laudable century-spanning repertoire. Camerata Pacifica continues to grow apace and now launches its 36th season with eight programs performed at four different venues across Southern California. It’s a fascinating season as it includes the launch of “Beethoven 32,” […]
Rory Block got her first exposure to acoustic guitar as a pre-teen in Greenwich Village in the 1960s, fell in love with Mississippi Delta blues guitar before she turned 15, taught herself how to play the style by transcribing songs on old records, and then left home to find the masters in person. She released […]
Tommy Guerrero was a pioneer of street skating as an original member of the iconic Bones Brigade alongside Tony Hawk, then traded that legendary status to take up a career as a musician. At first working as a member of the skate rock band Free Beer and later Jet Black Crayon, in his solo efforts […]
With the NFL football season launching earlier this month, the Santa Barbara Symphony is hosting a kickoff of their own, a free season preview event on Thursday, September 18, at the at the historic Lobero Theatre. The preview will be jamming with fun, music, and inside info to introduce a season that marks a milestone […]
1974. The Oscars. The place is packed with Old and New Hollywood cognoscenti. Groucho Marx and Tatum O’Neal are breathing the same air, though likely from separate tables. Henry Mancini (Henry Mancini!!) is in the pit conducting the Academy Awards Orchestra. Now Burt Bacharach and the amazing Ann-Margret are at the dais – Burt in […]
It was high Cs on the high seas when Hiroko Benko threw a Broadway-themed sunset cruise on her popular whale watching vessel the Condor Express. The cruise featured soprano Deborah Bertling and tenor William Simpson with pianist Renee Hamaty bringing the Great White Way to life against the backdrop of the Pacific. Next month Hiroko […]
Students are back in school. Both Concerts in the Park at Chase Palm and the Stow House’s Music at the Ranch have come to a close, as will UCSB A&L’s summer film series after Friday. But wait! Free weekly outdoor events will still be happening in the September section of summer, courtesy of a new […]
It’s almost unbelievable. It’s been nearly six decades since Steppenwolf scored its first hit single with the generation-defining rock anthem “Born to Be Wild,” and only now is there a documentary film about the band. As it is, the 2024 film Born to Be Wild: The Story of Steppenwolf won’t yet be available at cinemas […]
The Music Academy of the West ended its annual summer festival on a high note at the Granada with the Academy Festival Orchestra, under conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya, playing Mahler’s “Symphony No. 3 in D Minor.” The stellar performance featured Julia Holoman, mezzo-soprano fellow, the children’s troupe Sing! and the Music Academy Women’s Chorus. Stirring stuff… […]
Music Academy of the West’s summer festival and its 100-something event season has moved to the rear-view mirror after last weekend’s triumphant performance of Mahler’s Third at the final Academy Festival Orchestra symphony concert, complete with the MAW women’s chorus (which sprinkled in eight LVI fellows) and the Sing! Children’s Choir. But there’s only a […]
With its 2025-26 season UCSB Arts & Lectures is now offering more classical music events than any other programming organization from fall to spring, with a full 14 concerts on the slate for their 66th season. Recitals dominate the schedule, with performances from pianists Daniil Trifonov, Víkingur Ólafsson, Van Cliburn Gold Medalist Aristo Sham and […]
Music by and at the Music Academy of the West also returns shortly courtesy of both the third season of its Mariposa Concerts, which feature pre-concert wine receptions before the Hahn Hall performances, and a pair of special intimate fundraising concerts with longtime MAW faculty artists billed as “Up Close & Unforgettable.” Mariposa makes its […]
After the extravagant production of the doom and gloom-infused morality and reckless wreckage-and-punishment tale of Don Giovanni at the Granada in mid-July, things turn a bit frothier and lighthearted with the Music Academy of the West Lehrer Vocal Institute’s performance of one-acts. Stripped down to the bare essentials and staged much more intimately at Hahn […]
Time was, one could reasonably assume that seeing the classic film musical The Music Man would launch a new generation of trombonists (after all, they did lead the big parade, with 110 cornets right behind). Nowadays, not so much. But Music Academy of the West trombone fellow Sarah Roshani Goldberg had a more circuitous, if […]
Opera director Mo Zhou made her Music Academy of the West debut two summers ago with a reimagining of La bohème – from 1830s Paris to Brooklyn in 2011. This weekend, Zhou and the talented MAW vocal and instrumental fellows take on Mozart’s Don Giovanni, with the director moving the time and place from Spain […]
Tales from the Tavern’s new six-concert season begins Wednesday night, July 23, with a doozy of a show pairing roots and country-inflected singer-songwriters Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore in an “almost acoustic” duo concert. But first there’s a special Audience Appreciation concert off-site, a mini music festival on Sunday, July 20, at a venue […]
The venerable Ventura Music Festival – once merely a classical-meets-jazz affair spread over two weeks at various venues around the town – has evolved into multi-genre five-day bursts held more than once a year. The summer installment takes place July 24-28 at The Performing Arts Center at Ventura College, beginning with “Rising Stars from the […]
Lucinda Lane, the self-described “IndieBossaJazzTwang” band that has singer Nicole Lvoff and songwriter-guitarist (and music journo) Joe Woodard as its core members, often appears as a duo at various venues around town. But their gig at SOhO on July 21 vastly expands the universe by adding the rhythm section of bassist Jim Connolly and drummer […]
