Tag archives: music
Santa Barbara Symphony, under veteran maestro Nir Kabaretti, kicked offs its 65th season in fine style at the Granada with an intoxicating Rhapsody in Blue concert, featuring pianist Jeffrey Biegel, playing George Gershwin’s 1924 classic. The entertaining show kicked off with Hungarian Ernst von Dohnanyi’s folk and gospel-infused American Rhapsody, wrapping with Hector Berlioz’s epic […]
The 175-strong Women’s Auxiliary of the Music Academy of the West has clearly got a winner with its latest fundraising effort in 47 years, Music in the Gardens, with 400 guests raising around $80,000. The new event, which replaces its May Madness rummage sale, was co-chaired by a tony triumvirate of Evie Vesper, Kaye Willette, […]
No musician performed longer and more frequently with David Bowie than pianist Mike Garson. The now 73-year-old Garson hooked up with the late British singer-songwriter back when the keyboardist was in his mid-20s, in the early 1970s, after Bowie heard his work with an experimental artist named Annette Peacock. The singer never joined Bowie on […]
Bringing Return to the Forbidden Planet back to the Rubicon Theatre just two years after the Ventura debut of the hit early-1990s jukebox musical based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest and the 1956 science fiction film Forbidden Planet was a case of a trite theater cliché actually turning out to be true. “It very definitely is […]
Santa Barbara Symphony, celebrating its 65th anniversary, is having a ball! To mark the occasion, the magical music makers held a glittering sold-out fête for 250 guests in the Hilton rotunda, creatively decorated by local event designer Percy Sales. The boffo bash, co-chaired by Anne Towbes and Janet Garufis, featured the Youth Symphony Chamber Orchestra, […]
Westmont Theatre Arts brings a contemporary energy and sense of humor to its staging of Pride and Prejudice on Thursday, October 25, and Saturday, October 27, at 7:30 pm, and Sunday, October 28, at 2 pm, all in Westmont’s Porter Theatre. Tickets to the play, which is based on the novel by Jane Austen and […]
In my exclusive interview with The Real Savage Henry, I asked if they will go public for the first time in my column about their disbanding the band, word I heard from them on the QT after their “last” gig at the Mercury Lounge back in May, as well as talk about making their final […]
Anne Torsiglieri has been seen on Broadway in Top Girls, Parade, Blood Brothers, and Miss Saigon, as well as in the official national tour of Les Misérables. Her off-Broadway and regional performance have taken place everywhere from Manhattan to the Pacific Northwest, and she earned DramaLogue and Garland awards for her portrayal of Catherine Sloper […]
The Music Academy of the West’s [MAW] esteemed Women’s Auxiliary [MAWWA] under the dynamic leadership of chair Evie Vesper, is launching a new direction for the first time in 47 years, with its first – and soon to be annual – Music in the Garden event on Sunday, October 21, at the academy. The occasion […]
Santa Barbara Beautiful hosted its 54th annual awards celebration Growing Resiliency at the Music Academy of the West for 200 guests. The fab fete, co-chaired by Mark Whitehurst and Kerry Methner, and emceed by ubiquitous KEYT-TV reporter John Palminteri, donated half of the day’s proceeds to the Montecito Trails Foundation, one of the event’s honorees, […]
Man and his machines form the basic elements of Cirque Mechanics, the modern company founded 14 years ago by former BMX bike champion Chris Lashua, who began by creating an innovative aerial apparatus. In his and his team’s vision, circus certainly has acrobatics and clowning around, but also is rooted in realism achieved by the […]
Santa Barbara Choral Society, which kicks off its 71st season of song in December with its popular Hallelujah Project at the Lobero, hosted a pre-season reception at the Music Academy of the West’s Marilyn Horne House. One of the highlights of the new season is Visions of Peace and Freedom, featuring Vaughan Williams’s Dona Nobis […]
Westmont researchers are using a new high-tech tool to understand human neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease. As part of a summer research project, Yi-Fan Lu, Westmont assistant professor of biology, and senior Heidi Pullmann used the new microelectrode array, purchased through the Westmont Provost’s Office, to detect and record the response of neurons to […]
If the Santa Barbara Symphony were an individual, it would have just qualified to start collecting Social Security. But instead of kicking back and resting on its laurels at age 65, hunkering down reminiscing over good times from a rocking chair, the orchestral organization is instead amping up its ambitions in just about every way, […]
The choreographers behind State Street Ballet’s season-opening world premiere, Chaplin, had no idea that Charlie Chaplin had a major Montecito and Santa Barbara connection, the silent-film icon having had a hand in the building of the Montecito Inn in 1928, and marrying Oona O’Neill here in 1943. All they knew was that not only did […]
The last time I saw Grammy-winning singer Boz Scaggs was when I first moved here from Los Angeles in 2007 and I was invited by developer Pat Smith to attend a lavish 50th birthday bash for his then-wife, Susan, at actor Michael Douglas‘s former estate on Hot Springs Road, which he was leasing from the […]
The calendar is crammed as the new arts season arrives in earnest, although the biggest place in the land is more of a warm-weather venue. That would be the Santa Barbara Bowl, where it’s actually, unironically, unlikely to rain when Alanis Morissette takes the stage on Friday, September 27, followed two days later by the […]
Nobody who lives and breathes and can hear music needs an introduction to the Beach Boys, the band of brothers and cousins that more or less put Southern California on the musical map with a surfeit of surf hits followed by pop songs and, later, Pet Sounds, perhaps the greatest pop album of all time. […]
Santa Barbara Symphony’s 65th anniversary season, which kicks off at the Granada on October 20, promises to be a real humdinger. It includes a Stravinsky double bill, including The Rite of Spring, directed by the Ensemble Theatre Company’s Jonathan Fox with the State Street Ballet, and, for the first time on November 24, a Thanksgiving […]
Camerata Pacifica began life almost 30 years ago as the Bach Camerata, a tribute to the famed Baroque composer whose music they frequently performed, including multiple concerts of the Brandenburg Concertos. But even before the Santa Barbara-based chamber music organization changed to its current moniker right around the time it marked its first decade, the […]
