Tag archives: music
It’s taken a while, but audiences have finally stopped coming to Creed Bratton’s concerts expecting to hang out with his self-named character from The Office. “I’d be talking or singing and they’d shout out my lines from the show,” he explained over the phone from his Los Angeles home recently. “So I’d just stop and […]
Opera Santa Barbara, which is also being honored as a Granada Legend, was founded by Montecito couple Marilyn Gilbert and Nathan Rundlett as Santa Barbara Grand Opera in 1994, with a vision of creating a professional opera company based in town to serve audiences on the Central Coast. From its humble beginnings when the sets […]
Melissa Manchester’s career began at an early age, including studying piano and harpsichord at the Manhattan School of Music, singing commercial jingles at 15, and serving as a staff writer for Chappell Music while still attending Manhattan’s High School of Performing Arts. After serving as a member of the Harlettes, Bette Midler’s back-up singers, Manchester […]
Montecito author Mark Brickley, who wrote the music biography Postcards From Liverpool: Beatles Moments & Memories two years ago, has re-issued the book of Fab Four vignettes with five new chapters and two dozen new photos of the mop-topped rockers. The book’s new edition includes a chapter on how to collect, grade and value classic […]
Despite the fact that she is Kenny Loggins’ youngest daughter, and half-sister to Crosby Loggins, once a stalwart on the Santa Barbara music scene who was the winner of MTV’s Rock the Cradle back in 2008, it wasn’t pre-ordained that Hana Aluna would become a professional musician. Sure, Kenny wrote and recorded the lullaby with […]
On a personal note, I remember Geoffrey Rutkowski, former principal cellist of the Santa Barbara Symphony, who has died aged 78. A charming, gentle and enormously talented individual, Geoffrey joined the music faculty at UCSB in 1968 until his retirement in 2013 as a Distinguished Professor Emeritus. He played all over the world, including two […]
The Music Academy of the West concluded its 72nd annual summer festival on a high note when the Academy Festival Orchestra, under conductor Marin Alsop, performed Dvorak’s Symphony No. 7 at the Granada. The entertaining program also comprised of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Jennifer Higdon‘s 13-minute piece blue cathedral, just a week after her well received […]
The Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art has organized a touring retrospective exhibition of Don Reitz, one of the most experimental and ingenious ceramic artists of the last century. “Spontaneous Response: The Innovative Ceramics of Don Reitz” opens August 29 and runs through November 9 with a reception Thursday, August 29, from 4-6 pm. “Don Reitz […]
Watching David Crosby: Remember My Name at a SBIFF screening at a sold-out Lobero Theatre back on Super Bowl Sunday last February 3 was a thrilling but almost excruciating experience, made even more so knowing that the aging Santa Barbara-raised rock star was seated just a few rows away, watching himself sing, and squirm, on […]
Marin Alsop is a serious classical musician, perhaps even more so than the average conductor, given what she had to go through to accomplish what she has over a 35-year career. Along with her many other achievements, Alsop became the first woman ever to lead a major American orchestra when she was appointed music director […]
Anais Pellegrini has joined the Santa Barbara Symphony as Vice President of Advancement. Born in Malta and raised in China, Australia, and Hong Kong, she began her career in fundraising at New York’s Katonah Museum of Art in 2005 and has since worked for a range of non-profit organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, the Community […]
Millennial Massachusetts-born brothers Paul and Joe DeGeorge, the Harry and The Potters band, arrived at the Santa Barbara Public Library on Saturday, July 27, on their whirlwind U.S. Summer Tour, and part of the library’s annual Harry Potter birthday celebrations for literacy. The band’s gigs are at all major libraries and clubs, and the next […]
For its 2019 opera presentation, Music Academy of the West is providing the vocal and instrumental fellows the chance to take on a very modern work that has only had a handful of previous productions. Cold Mountain – the 2014 saga from the prolific composer Jennifer Higdon – is adapted from Charles Frazier’s epic Civil […]
As the 72nd Music Academy of the West summer festival nears its conclusion, the Santa Barbara Bowl was the place to be on an idyllic evening for a community concert with the historic London Symphony Orchestra and the Academy Festival Orchestra under conductor Daniel Harding, music director of the Orchestre de Paris. The sold-out show, […]
Five-time Grammy Award winner and 2002 MacArthur “Genius Grant” Award recipient double bassist Edgar Meyer negotiates a rarely traveled road as a star in both the classical music and bluegrass worlds, where he works as both a performer and a composer. Hailed dryly by The New Yorker as “the most remarkable virtuoso in the relatively […]
Scary Stats Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinformation circulating on the web and social media on political and scientific issues, and few people take the time to fact-check statements that contradict common sense or consensus science. In a recent letter to Montecito Journal, using sign removals and research conducted by a PhD in Sociology, […]
Classical musicians don’t come much more ambitious and open-minded than flutist Claire Chase. The accomplishments of the soloist, collaborative artist, curator, and advocate for new and experimental music are numerous, including founding the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) in 2001, which has premiered more than 800 works since its inception, while her recognition includes being named […]
It was a trip down memory lane for polo patriarch Glen Holden and his wife, Gloria, when for the first time in six years, they hosted a Family Fun Day at their former Gehache Ranch, now owned by Santa Barbara Polo Club president, John Muse. The fun event was so oversubscribed, with more than 500 […]
The London Symphony Orchestra’s four-year partnership with the Music Academy of the West, which came on the heels of a similar groundbreaking deal with the New York Philharmonic from 2014-17, officially began last year. But this summer is when the entire LSO – one of the world’s great orchestras that is also well known for […]
Here’s one you don’t want to miss if you can help it: The Broadway Musical Cruise aboard the Condor Express. Owner Hiroko Benko invites one and all to come aboard and enjoy the best of Broadway on a smooth Saturday evening cruise with live and on-deck performers Deborah Bertling and Carol Ann Manzi, accompanied by […]
