Tag archives: musician

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Local musician David Segall launched his newest single and video, “Touch of Love,” at a free, public event on Thursday, June 27 at Oniracom SB. The video of the song was weaved with the Plastic-Free July initiative, and featured the “Ocean Guardian” students of Adams Elementary School, our own Montecito Water District Water Conservation Coordinator […]

The Santa Barbara singer-songwriter community was devastated when the tirelessly eclectic producers, sound engineer, and songcrafter Robinson Eikenberry died unexpectedly on July 4, 2017. The 35-year local resident who graduated from Crane School in Montecito was honored soon after with a memorial concert at the Lobero Theatre, where many of the Santa Barbara artists he […]

Aussie music maker Peter Clark has debuted his homage to our Eden by the Beach, 16 months after the Thomas Fire and devastating mudslides. Montecito-based Peter, whose songs have been recorded by Eartha Kitt, Jane Russell, and Don Ho, is currently producing 2013 Teen Star winner Mary-Grace Langhorne, whose first CD will debut next month. […]

Rock singer Ronnie Platt had been making most of his money as a truck driver in Chicago for the better part of 25 years – singing along to Kansas’ “Dust in the Wind” and “Carry On Wayward Son” on classic rock radio in the cab – when someone forwarded him the press release indicating that […]

Three years ago this month, mandolinist-composer Ashley Broder released Two Trees, her first solo recording, which was produced by Ventura resident Kevin McCormick, the longtime bassist for Jackson Browne. Just last month the Ventura-bred, now Santa Barbara-based Broder did a mini-tour including two local dates that introduced her new trio featuring fiddler Ben Schreiber and […]

The Wikipedia page on Danny Kortchmar suggests that his work as a session musician and more going back four decades and longer “helped define the signature sound of the singer-songwriter era of the 1970s.” The online people-powered encyclopedia is known for hyperbole, but in this case there can be little argument. After all Kortchmar worked […]

The list of bands, records, and concerts that bassist-keyboardist Pete Sears has played with or on over a half-century-plus career contains some very well-known names and songs. He recorded the Rod Stewart albums Gasoline Alley, Every Picture Tells A Story, and Never a Dull Moment, including the hit singles “Maggie May” (Sears played the celeste) […]

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 […]

To the historic Union Hotel in Los Alamos when English rocker Alan Parsons, who has been nominated for 11 Grammys, celebrated the 20th anniversary of his half century with a heavenly host of friends and music stars. The songwriter and record producer, who worked on the Beatles’ Abbey Road and Let It Be albums, as […]

Mysticism is made manifest via the spiritually inspired saxophone played by Charles Lloyd, the jazz artist whose career began in Memphis in the 1950s, found stardom in the 1960s (when his Forest Flower was the first-ever million-selling jazz album), became an inner-seeking Big Sur recluse in the ’70s and resurrected himself in the ’90s as […]

In an impromptu gig at Roy’s Restaurant on August 16, locals were treated to the music of upcoming Generation-Y songstress Carly Jo Jackson, who was in town to begin recording her first LP with music guru producer and par-none sound master Chris Pelonis [Jeff Bridges], at his studios, Lost Coast Records. The album’s release date […]

Louise Goffin, daughter of the iconic songwriting duo Carole King and Gerry Goffin, has long been a singer-songwriter and producer on her own, dating back to Kid Blue,her debut album more than 40 years ago. Her style has always drawn from both her parents’ pop sensibilities, her mom’s piano-based melody-driven music, and the folk-rock of […]

Don’t talk to Peter Case about craft. The veteran singer-songwriter who started life as a power pop/punk rocker in such bands as The Plimsouls and The Nerves back in the 1970s and ’80s finds hearing that people love his “well-crafted songs” something close to an insult as it undercuts the artistry. Which seems reasonable, since […]

Montecito culinary wizard Philippe Sautot‘s resurrected rock career continues apace. Last year, as a I reported in this illustrious organ, Philippe performed his first concert in four decades with old bandmates Sloane at a 450-guest gala in the charming Provencal town of St. Remy, which raised $52,000 for cancer research. He is just back in […]

Sudama Mark Kennedy doesn’t talk a whole lot about his past, but his background includes the fact that his father, a career diplomat who had posts in Yemen, Beirut, Lebanon, and elsewhere, was one of the hostages who became famous in the Iran-Contra Crisis back in 1979. By then, Sudama was already traveling and following […]

One not to miss live is singer-songwriter, musician’s musician Johnny Irion, no stranger to his love of writing music and performing live. His bigger-than-Texas heart of gold is returning happily and with deep affection to our town, with a live concert at the Lobero Theatre on Tuesday, May 22, to celebrate the launch of his […]

Critics have been tripping over themselves to find fresh metaphors and more to describe soprano Julia Bullock‘s considerable gifts and her depth of emotional delivery. Discerning local song lovers have already had the pleasure of experiencing her extended talents in person twice in the last couple of years, as she sang “Somewhere” with the New […]