Tag archives: music
When your company is named after a fungus that grows on cow poop, clearly you’re involved with an outfit that loves playfulness as well as metaphors. Pilobolus formed at Dartmouth back in 1971 but has grown more explosively than its light-seeking namesake, now numbering more than 120 dance works in its repertoire, including three entities […]
Curtis Salgado harmonica and singing added color to both Robert Cray’s band and Roomful of Blues for years before he started making records on his own about 25 years ago. Five years after that, Salgado, who also has an attention-grabbing highly emotive blues voice, started playing with Portland-based guitarist Alan Hager. Just this week, the […]
The Music Academy of the West has established an annual Alumni Enterprise Awards scheme to help budding musical entrepreneurs who’ve attended the Miraflores campus. The awards, ranging from $2,500 to $20,000, will fund original ideas in areas including artistic expression, audience development, and technology, based on scope and scale. Academy president Scott Reed says: “We […]
The Jazz Ensemble at UCSB held its end-of-session concerts in early December, despite being the first day of the Thomas Fire with smoke in the air and evacuations. The 50 musicians and four vocalists range from professionals to students forming into seven mini-orchestral jazz bands. The bands are led by Jazz Ensemble director Jon Nathan […]
St. Louis has been in the news in recent years, for triumphs such as the Cardinals continued baseball dominance and the tragedy of the Michael Brown shooting in nearby Ferguson. But the city also happens to have a highly prized symphony orchestra, notable for both its history as the second oldest such ensemble in the […]
Music director JoAnne Wasserman, marking her 25th year, was clearly in her element when the Santa Barbara Choral Society, celebrating its 70th anniversary, staged its fifth Hallelujah Project at the Lobero. The concert, which included Vivaldi’s magnificent Gloria and, of course, Handel’s uplifting Hallelujah Chorus, was a glorious Yuletide miscellany of seasonal cheer featuring the […]
Santa Barbara author Elizabeth Gould writes from experience in her first book, Your Best Health by Friday: How to Overcome Anxiety, Depression, Stress, Trauma, PTSD and Chronic Illness. “It is not the first book I started, but it is the first one I’ve finished,” she told me a bijou book bash at Tecolote, the lively […]
Santa Barbara-born, Berklee-trained blues guitarist-singer-songwriter Alastair Greene has been plying his trade professionally for 20 years now, but the last seven or so has seen him put his own trio on the back burner in favor of a lucrative role as sideman to Alan Parsons, one of progressive-rock’s progenitors, who also lives locally. But now […]
With dozens of participants, Westmont College’s oh-so-popular 13th annual Christmas Festival at the First Presbyterian Church is undoubtedly the hottest ticket in town, with four performances staged to cater for the demand. With the full force of the Montecito college’s music talent on display, including the orchestra, women’s and men’s chorale, and the chamber singers, […]
The Arlington Theatre was packed for the much-awaited return concert by Pink Martini, the Portland, Oregon, musicians making their eighth appearance here, all eight of which I have been lucky enough to see. The sold-out show, part of the popular UCSB Arts & Lectures series, featured Harvard graduate China Forbes on vocals singing a wide […]
It was all too beastly for words when the Santa Barbara Symphony, under guest conductor Lara Webber, held its second annual family concert Carnival of the Animals at the Granada. With tickets a mere $10, the 1,500-seat venue was packed with parents and children as the ubiquitous Andrew Firestone hosted and narrated the show with […]
Santa Barbara Revels founder and fifth-generation Californian Susan Keller moved to Canada with her new husband after graduating from Stanford but returned to California, sans husband, some years later. She is not only a lifelong stage and TV performer but has also earned a law degree from UCLA. She moved to Montecito in 1994 with […]
As always, Festival Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker – at the Arlington on Saturday and Sunday – is performed by a huge cast and backed by a full orchestra conducted by Elise Unruh playing Tchaikovsky’s iconic score. Kids of all ages who are attend the company’s school are augmented in a big way by several […]
Maria Muldaur already had a decade-plus of experience in music that had spanned jugband to folk-rock to bluegrass, when out of the blue she scored a mega-hit in 1974 with “Midnight at the Oasis”. But as she readily admits, fame, and fortune beyond that blip wasn’t in the cards, nor something she desired. Eschewing pop, […]
Hulda, Sophia, and Grace were ages 7, 10, and 12 in 1998 when they attended their first local fiddle competition near their Texas home, and within a year won both state and national championships in their respective age groups for four years running. Nearly two decades later, the trio’s evolution from “whiz-kid Western swing fiddlers” […]
If Nicole Lvoff could swing it, she’d rather be singing jazz music full-time for a living than working in the public library system. On the other hand, if it weren’t for her library job, she might never have met Joe Woodard, another Santa Barbara who is well-known in town as an entertainment journalist (The News-Press […]
The 20th annual Empty Bowls fundraiser at the Ben Page Youth Center was so busy there had to be three seatings for the simple soup and bread meal, which allowed the 1,000 participants paying just $30 to choose a hand-painted bowl and, after dining, take the bowl home. The bustling event, founded by Danyel Dean, […]
Dolly Parton giggles her way through the last question on our group phone interview and she is refreshingly everything you hope her to be – sweet, humble, funny, the Dolly with whom you’ve grown up watching on TV. Dolly began her solo career in 1967 with Hello, I’m Dolly and has since amassed success in […]
Westmont hosts its 13th annual Christmas Festival, retelling the Christmas story by weaving narration with music from the Westmont Orchestra, College Choir, and Choral Union on Friday, December 1, at 7 pm; Saturday, December 2, at 2 pm and 7 pm; and Sunday, December 3, at 3 pm, all at First Presbyterian Church, 21 E. […]
A record 560 guests packed into the ballroom at Fess Parker’s Doubletree when Human Rights Watch held its 11th annual Voices for Justice dinner which raised a hefty $950,000 for the nearly 40-year-old nonprofit, which is a leading defender of fundamental freedoms, the activists who uphold them, and vulnerable people worldwide in 90 countries globally. […]
