Tag archives: music

Into the Fold
By Richard Mineards   |   March 14, 2019

Lotusland hosted a fabulous feast of folded artwork with its new opening representing the work of 12 renowned origami artists throughout the U.S. The overflow crowd for Lotusland in Origami: Flora, Fauna, and Ganna included Asian art historian Meher McArthur and Montecito’s own artist Holly Sherwin, co-curators. Origami is no longer limited to Japan, with […]

Genova’s Unforgettable Journey
By Steven Libowitz   |   March 14, 2019

Lisa Genova graduated valedictorian, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Bates College with a degree in Biopsychology and earned a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Harvard University. But it wasn’t all that long before she took a left turn, employing her scientific knowledge in service of writing fiction in an effort to humanize brain diseases […]

Finding Passion in Playing Through Tragedy
By Steven Libowitz   |   March 14, 2019

The last week of February was a tough one for Anne-Sophie Mutter. Not only did the famed violinist lose her former husband and longtime musical partner when André Previn died on February 28, but she also came down with influenza, forcing postponement of the Los Angeles opening concert in her upcoming five-city American tour, making […]

En Pointe
By Richard Mineards   |   March 14, 2019

A mandatory evacuation scuppered my chances of watching the first show of Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet at the Granada, which featured George Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments, but I was able to catch the second day’s three-part performance under Scottish artistic director Ashley Wheater. The show kicked off impressively with Justin Peck‘s In Creases featuring two grand […]

CADA at Coral
By Richard Mineards   |   March 14, 2019

Social gridlock reigned at the Coral Casino’s La Pacifica ballroom when CADA – the Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse – hosted an underwriting party for its annual Amethyst Ball at the Ritz-Carlton Bacara next month. The beachside bash attracted 90 well heeled guests and raised around $100,00 to cover costs associated with the glittering […]

Laguna Blanca School’s Library Dances Program
By Joanne A Calitri   |   March 14, 2019

As part of their Advanced Placement English studies, the students in Laguna Blanca English teacher Charles Donelan‘s class integrate the art of dance into their study of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in an annual program titled, Library Dances. The students study with the State Street Ballet, various musicians, and newly added this year, artist-practitioner from Shakespeare’s […]

Brossé & Mozart: Great Minds Sync Alike
By Steven Libowitz   |   March 14, 2019

Four years and at least seven of his own scores ago, the distinguished conductor-composer Dirk Brossé made his debut with the Santa Barbara Symphony with the Granada’s first live-to-screening synchronized musical performance since the installation of the theater’s state-of-the-art rear-projection film system. Brossé and the members of the orchestra who often also frequently freelance on […]

The 118th Annual NAMM Show
By Joanne A Calitri   |   February 28, 2019

The 2019 NAMM Show in Anaheim, California (Jan 24-27), where the global leaders of music instruments, production, pro audio, and event technology industries gather to showcase their latest. This year had 115,301 registered industry professionals, 2,000 exhibiting member companies representing 7,000 brands, all housed in the Anaheim Convention Center’s triplex and its sister hotels, the […]

Dance Beyond Description as Joffrey Returns
By Steven Libowitz   |   February 28, 2019

Local dance lovers are in for a treat this week when the Joffrey Ballet, the veteran company considered among America’s elite, returns to the Granada for the first time in more than half a decade for two different programs spanning seven works. That’s a tall order even for one of the country’s most revered troupe […]

Leadership in Turbulent Times
By Richard Mineards   |   February 28, 2019

World-renowned presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times bestselling author Doris Kearns Goodwin packed the Granada when she spoke about Leadership in Turbulent Times, the title of her seventh book published last year. The tome is a culmination of Goodwin’s five-decade career of studying American presidents focusing on Abraham Lincoln, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, […]

Puppy Power: Collective Confers Jazz-plus
By Steven Libowitz   |   February 21, 2019

Trying to pigeonhole Snarky Puppy into a single genre would be a fool’s errand, but suffice it to say that the three-time Grammy Award-winning Brooklyn-based collective that features a revolving cast of up to 25 musicians makes music that’s at once heady, heart-centered, and headed for the dance floor, an amalgam they call “music for […]

Quartet Kills
By Richard Mineards   |   February 21, 2019

Grammy Award nominees the Danish String Quartet, visiting our Eden by the Beach for the fourth time, gave two very different performances for their UCSB Arts & Lectures appearances. The fab four – violinists Frederik Oland and Rune Tonsgaard Sorensen, cellist Fredrik Schoyen Sjolin and violist Asbjorn Norgaard – kicked off their latest visit at […]

Teen Star 2019
By James Buckley   |   February 21, 2019

I’ve been to a number of Joe Lambert‘s Teen Star competitions and the only reason I’ve missed any is because I was either out of the country or out of my mind. This show – the Teen Star Final – always presents some of the finest, or at least most enjoyable, entertainment one is likely […]

New York Polyphony Presents “Faith and Reason”
By Steven Libowitz   |   February 14, 2019

Baritone Christopher Dylan Herbert was one of the few Music Academy of the West vocal fellows to span the changeover from Abravanel to Hahn halls in 2007-08, and his approach to his own career underwent a simultaneous metamorphosis during his MAW tenure. Sure, Herbert found his time on Mirafloras campus “enjoyable and fun” and made […]

Opera Santa Barbara 25 Years
By Lynda Millner   |   February 7, 2019

Opera Santa Barbara (OSB) celebrated its 25th anniversary with a concert at the Lobero Theatre followed by a party across the street at the El Paseo Restaurant. To add some sparkle to the occasion, the evening began with a champagne reception on the terrace at the front of the theatre for 500 guests. After going […]

Art Kids
By Richard Mineards   |   January 31, 2019

More than 20 student artists were honored by the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara during a presentation and reception at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, with each of them receiving a $2,500 scholarship and their artwork exhibited in the museum’s Family Resource Center. “Much of their work reveals a remarkable maturity and sureness of […]

Soothe Your Qi by the Sea
By Steven Libowitz   |   January 24, 2019

With the stress and extravaganzas of the holidays a few weeks in the rear view mirror, Qigong and Tai Chi instructor Jessica Kolbe is collaborating with her yoga instructor husband Ray Kolbe in a daylong immersion this weekend for people to nourish and pamper their bodies, hearts, minds, and spirits. Among the activities beyond practicing […]

Jon Batiste Lecture & Concert Review
By Joanne A Calitri   |   January 24, 2019

Musician Jon Batiste held an afternoon open interview and evening solo concert at UCSB on January 11, via the Arts & Lectures Programming, in conjunction with the UCSB Music Department, sponsored by KCSB FM, KCBX FM, and Potek Wines. Batiste honed his chops at age six as the drummer in a family band and tuned […]

Jodie Hollander’s Healing Flight from Classicism
By Jeff Wing   |   January 24, 2019

Jodie Hollander grew up in a musical family, and that is a largish understatement. Concert pianist father, cellist mother, two sibs each with the gift of drawing effortless gossamer from the violin; dinner conversation ran to the rhapsodic. Now imagine Jodie – a young girl whose double helix would later reveal itself as a ladder […]

Pounding it with Paula: 6Qs with a Classic Comedian
By Steven Libowitz   |   January 24, 2019

Paula Poundstone is the first to admit to a penchant for long-winded speeches, a tendency toward stream of consciousness rambling that would be confirmed by her colleagues on one of her longest-running gigs as a panelist on NPR’s top-rated show, the weekly comedy news quiz known as “Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” So the veteran […]