Tag archives: music
The “core four” of Camerata Pacifica’s chamber musicians chairs – violinist Paul Huang, violist Richard O’Neill, cellist Ani Aznavoorian, and pianist Warren Jones – congregate in various formats for an enticing program at Hahn Hall on Friday, February 7. Sandwiched around 250th birthday boy Beethoven’s Sonata in C Major for Piano & Cello, Op. 102, […]
The Lobero Theatre Chamber Music Project, which had a sneak preview concert early last month, mounts the first of a planned annual festival this weekend by pairing Artistic and Music Director Heiichiro Ohyama, the violist who previously helmed the now defunct Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra, and violinist Benjamin Beilman, who Ohyama selected as Musical Advisor […]
We caught up with Glen Phillips, the lead singer-songwriter of Toad the Wet Sprocket, coincidentally just a few days after the death of Terry Jones, one of the stars of the seminal comedy group Monty Python. The Santa Barbara-born alternative rock band took its name from one of the troupe’s skits back when Phillips was […]
If violinist-violist Sara Bashore hadn’t been craving cookies as a kid, she might never have made it to Montenegro. At least that’s what Bashore remembered about her first exposure to the violin at age five. “My parents took me to an orchestra concert and asked me if I was interested in any of the instruments,” […]
Hanzhi Wang wasn’t born an accordion player. But it was only a few years later at age six that the young Chinese girl fell in love with the instrument when she overheard it on the soundtrack of an Italian movie. “My father was watching it and I heard the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard […]
Montecito resident Christie Jenkins has been hard at work planning a unique musical experience at the Rockwood Woman’s Club in February; the Mercury Ballroom Supper Club runs nightly (with a matinée on Sunday) from Tuesday, February 11 through Sunday, February 16. Jenkins, who moved to Montecito in 2017, says she decided to create the four-hour […]
World-renowned cellist, composer, and curator Joshua Roman is an alumnus of the Music Academy of the West (MAW) since 2002. He sent out letters of inquiry around the U.S. to secure a space undisturbed for composing a 16-minute piece for the Cleveland Orchestra. Scott Reed, President and CEO of MAW, reached out to Ashley Woods […]
Way back in the spring of 2016, we wrote about the upcoming release of Songs in the Key of Double Bass, an exciting album debut from local singer-songwriter Danny Briere’s new acoustic project featuring two brilliant bassists who call Santa Barbara home: the decades-long veteran James Connolly, who has had a hand in innumerable musical […]
Although the project was 10 years in the making, director Paul Lamont remembers exactly why he wanted to make The Songpoet, his nearly two-hour exploration of the conflicts of career, family, ego, relationships, and sheer talent vs. achievement that have propelled the great American singer-songwriter Eric Andersen through his half-century-plus career. It was a moment […]
Camerata Pacifica kicks off the second half of Season 2 of its two-year “Why Beethoven?” project with a program wind program featuring flutist Jasmine Choi, oboists Nicholas Daniel and Claire Brazeau, clarinetist Jose Franch-Ballester and Pascal Archer, and bassoonists Judith Farmer and William Short, who no doubt are up to the task of tackling Beethoven’s […]
Sérgio Mendes just performed in Santa Barbara at Campbell Hall for UCSB A&L. Normally, we wouldn’t see someone of his stature – a three-time Grammy-winner whose nearly six-decades long career as a producer, composer, keyboardist and vocalist places him among the most internationally successful Brazilian artists in history – back in town just two scant […]
Scottish singer-songwriter KT Tunstall scored with her first album back in 2004, which earned her a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and spawned a worldwide hit with “Suddenly I See.” But the last half decade has seen a sea change for the already critically acclaimed artist who relocated in 2014 to Venice Beach and […]
Violinist Benjamin Beilman was slated to make his debut with the Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra in the 2017-18 season, but then the venerable ensemble closed operations after nearly 40 years. Now, barely more than two years later, Beilman has been booked for an even bigger role in the Lobero Theatre Chamber Music Project, a new collaboration with […]
Stephen Dombek had the unusual experience of hearing one of his compositions from the audience when the Quire of Voyces performed his setting of “Hodie – Christus Natus Est (Today Christ is Born)” at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art at December’s 1st Thursday art walk. Normally, Dombek would have been among the baritone section […]
Montecito Bank & Trusts’ MClub spent an evening with Santa Barbara Symphony music and artistic director Nir Kabaretti. It began in the Founders room of the Granada for light bites and wine and a chance to meet and greet Janet Garufis, who is the Symphony board chair and CEO of MB&T, and Kevin Marvin, president […]
Two-time Grammy-nominated guitarist Tommy Emmanuel – whose ability to approach his instrument by using all 10 fingers to play a variety of parts simultaneously has earned him worldwide respect – actually doesn’t care all that much about technique. The veteran Australian axeman, who has been playing professionally since age six, and at 44 became one […]
Maybe the Santa Barbara Symphony was taking a cue from the old commercials for Wrigley’s Doublemint chewing gum when they launched a second pops concert last December to go along with its longstanding New Year’s Eve show. As in, “Double your pleasure, double your fun.” Whatever the motivation, Year 2 for the Christmastime concert brings […]
Jim Brickman’s new album is a Christmas record – what else? – the seventh in his career that actually name checks the holiday in its title. Christmas Celebration is just that, a joyous journey through the carols, both classic and composed by the modern romantic piano sensation, pretty much like most of its predecessors. “I […]
“Perfect singing is boring.” That might seem like a strange declaration coming out of the mouth from Irish star Emmet Cahill, the widely hailed 28 year old who was named “Most Promising Young Singer” while still a student at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, awarded “Irish Tenor Of The Year” by the Irish American […]
Kent Anderson Butler, a Los Angeles-based video and performance artist, presents an exhibition November 21-January 18 at the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum. An opening reception and lecture for “From the Belly of the Whale: Kent Anderson Butler” will be January 9 from 4-6 pm at the museum. “The exhibition explores the current contemporary cultural climate through […]
