Tag archives: musician

Music Academy of the West fellows don’t normally return to the Miraflores campus as professionals just 14 months after finishing their residency at the summer festival. But that’s exactly what will happen when young pianist-composer August Baik, a 2025 MAW fellow who just turned 21, performs with violist Richard O’Neill, who was a fellow back […]

James McMurtry found critical and commercial success early in his career when his song “Painting by Numbers,” from his John Mellencamp-produced 1989 debut album Too Long in the Wasteland, connected with disaffected members of America’s heartland and became an MTV video hit. He’s been on the road ever since, almost incessantly touring northwards of 100 […]

“At Bakersfield College in the ‘70s, Charles put together and choreographed a whole program of those songs that had made Sinatra famous. The marching band played it at the football game on Friday nights. Everybody went to those football games.” Charles Wood III – jazz fiend, music educator, instrumental proselytizer, and a catalyzing match tossed […]

Taylor Dayne always wanted to be a pop star, going back to her days growing up on the South Shore of Long Island when she was known as Leslie Wunderman. As soon as she could, the singer began working in rock and roll bands, patterning herself after similarly big-voiced belters as Pat Benatar, The Pretenders’ […]

In her four decades as a recording artist, singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega has displayed a remarkable knack for creating songs that sound at once deeply personal and utterly universal, a true gift given that almost all of them are written from the first-person point of view. The observational pieces date to her early days with such […]

Outside of SoCal, Mike Campbell is largely known as a founding member of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the lead guitarist who spent decades alongside Petty delivering crunchy guitar lines on a bevy of big hits. Campbell also co-wrote many of the band’s singles, including “Refugee,” “Here Comes My Girl,” “You Got Lucky,” and “Runnin’ […]

“I’m in Maine, looking at New Hampshire across the Piscataqua River,” Tom Rush said over the phone late last month. “The leaves are turning and it’s gorgeous.” Rush’s voice is unmistakable, and so is the approach; a laid-back sincere tone that sounds like a chat across the porch with an old friend. He’s not just […]

North Carolina’s Southern Culture on the Skids – undoubtedly one of the great band names in history – are still alive and kicking 40 years after their self-titled debut was released. Original lead singer-guitarist Rick Miller, and two members who joined before the 1980s were out, nowadays underpin their skewed, tongue-in-cheek sensibility with a blend […]

Heading east on a plane, Pete Muller calls within moments in response to my text to talk about his new album and special concert at SOhO. It’s a trip that combines his two passionate pursuits (apart from his family); spending some time at PDT Partners – the Wall Street hedge fund Muller founded and whose model […]

Mary Chapin Carpenter scored a huge No. 1 country hit with “Shut Up and Kiss Me,” a song that still resonates with its sensual urgency and west coast swing groove more than 30 years later. Her earlier entries, “I Feel Lucky” and “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her,” both from her four-million selling 1992 album Come […]

Claire Chase, the innovative virtuosic flutist who has “world premiered” hundreds of compositions by a new generation of artists, was the first flutist to be awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship (2012) as well as the nearly-as prestigious Avery Fisher Prize (2017). Two years later, she was a Mosher Guest Artist at Music Academy of the […]

As a kid in Long Island, New York, Jackson Gillies woke up one of two ways: his mother Connie stirring him for his type 1 diabetes insulin shots, or his father Billy “cranking the Grateful Dead and Genesis through the floorboards.” What follows is a life of tireless dedication to music and activism for his […]

Violinist Ari Streisfeld has garnered critical acclaim worldwide for his performances of diverse repertoire after originally establishing himself as one of the foremost interpreters of contemporary classical music. He’s also the co-founder of the world-renowned JACK Quartet, the fearless foursome that quickly became one of the experimental engines of new music after forming at Eastman […]

Aimee Mann’s gift for literate lyrics that belie the bright melodies of her chamber folk-pop music has defined her own genre for more than 30 years of a solo career.  Her oeuvre is the vulnerable truth laid bare, mostly drawn from her own experiences, but in such refreshing ways that it’s decidedly universal, and healing […]

Anybody who caught Tina Schlieske’s mini-set closing out the series of six vocalists fronting the “Granada All Star House Band” at the theater earlier this month – where the powerhouse singer belted out her take on The Beatles “I’ve Got a Feeling,” Aretha Franklin’s version of “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” and her own composition “Everyday” […]

Maria Muldaur’s career has been a 60-year exploration of the music she grew up with as a Greenwich Village native who came of age in the early 1960s, the era of what John Sebastian calls the “folk scare,” when acoustic music of all kinds exploded in the downtown New York scene.  “It was an incredibly […]

If there were any justice in the entertainment world, Don Was would be a superstar, with periodic concerts at the Santa Barbara Bowl selling out as soon as they’re announced, and records crashing the Top 10 on a regular basis. As it is, Was had some hits in the late 1980s with his funky duo […]

Former Montecito resident Johnny Irion’s new album, Sleeping Soldiers of Love, has roots deep in the world of nature, but also sounds like a cinematic score. For good reason.  The songs on Soldiers were inspired by Jay Leutze’s 2013 bestseller Stand Up That Mountain: The Battle to Save One Small Community in the Wilderness Along […]

Residents of Montecito’s Hedgerow neighbourhood may be closely familiar with the tunes of the Grateful Dead, as, between the years of 2019 and 2021, my garage became the headquarters for my brother Cosmo’s Grateful Dead cover band, Curly & Co., made up of a rowdy posse of high school and college-age boys who, when not […]