Tag archives: Nir Kabaretti

The Sounds of Seventy
By Richard Mineards   |   September 6, 2022

Santa Barbara Symphony’s Crescendo Society hosted its second annual brunch at the Santa Barbara Club as the talented musicians, under maestro Nir Kabaretti, celebrate their 70th anniversary. As the 100 guests, major donors to the Granada Theatre-based organization, tucked into fresh fruit and quiche, while quaffing coffee and orange juice, the Gatsby Trio with symphony […]

New Season at the Symphony
By Steven Libowitz   |   August 30, 2022

Every year in recent times, the Santa Barbara Symphony announces a new season that’s about expanding its audience while keeping core fans as well as strengthening community connections. But this year feels different. Maybe it’s residue of having had to pivot to persevere during the pandemic or the impact of a recent five-year commitment from […]

Santa Barbara Symphony
By Steven Libowitz   |   August 2, 2022

The Santa Barbara Symphony is proud of its upcoming 2022-23 season, which marks the organization’s milestone 70th anniversary. Understandably so, as the season’s nine concerts boast an impressive list of guest artists including pianist Alessio Bax, jazz saxophone legend Ted Nash, Sinatra crooner Tony DeSare, and two different Grammy-nominated violin soloists in Guillermo Figueroa and […]

New Book by Bower
By Richard Mineards   |   May 31, 2022

Former actress Meghan Markle “came from nothing” and “trampled on others to get to the top” like a politician or a tycoon, her acid-penned biographer has revealed. “Victims” of the Duchess of Sussex, 40, are telling all in a new book by British investigative journalist Tom Bower, 75, he claims. Bower, speaking to GB News, […]

SBS hits a Crescendo
By Richard Mineards   |   May 17, 2022

It was a night on the tiles when Dan and Meg Burnham hosted a Crescendo bash for Santa Barbara Symphony supporters at their penthouse aerie above the Granada Theatre to celebrate the orchestra’s Fandango Picante concert under maestro Nir Kabaretti. Violin superstar Anne Akiko Meyers performed music by legendary composer Arturo Marquez during the Mexican […]

Clapping to the Sound of Four Hands
By Richard Mineards   |   May 3, 2022

It was certainly a hands-on performance when Berlin-based piano twosome Sivan Silver and Gil Garburg sharing the keyboard performed the world premiere of 62-year-old Austrian Richard Dunser’s composition derived from the work of Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms with the Santa Barbara Symphony for Romance in a New Key at the Granada. Dunser dedicated his […]

Symphonic Support
By Richard Mineards   |   April 26, 2022

After tough times during the pandemic, which saw the Santa Barbara Symphony lose $250,000 in concert ticket sales last year, the outlook is considerably brighter given many restrictions being lifted, according to president and CEO Kathryn Martin. With a $3 million annual budget, Martin told major supporters of the Crescendo Society at a bash at […]

Four Hands, 20 Fingers Add Up to Finesse and Fluidity
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 19, 2022

Most of the time we see piano four hands – which finds two pianists sharing the same keyboard – it comes off as something of a lark, a lighthearted diversion during a more serious recital from a piano studio. But there’s lots of beautiful and important music written specifically for the format, said Gil Garburg. […]

Little Book Brings Big Crowd
By Richard Mineards   |   March 29, 2022

A boffo bunch of bibliophiles descended on Tecolote in the Upper Village to mark the publication of Steven Gilbar’s Little Book of Montecito Writers, a 160-page paperback including more than 60 authors, which derived from a talk he gave at the village library last summer. The book signing, which benefitted the Montecito Library, also featured […]

Natural Rhythms
By Richard Mineards   |   March 1, 2022

Santa Barbara Symphony was in fine form under maestro Nir Kabaretti when it staged Beethoven in Bloom at the Granada. The show featured five-time Emmy Award-winner Jeff Beal’s new work The Great Circle, with an impressive backdrop of photos provided by the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden of the damage done by the cataclysmic fire and […]

Buoyant with Bernhardt: Pops Returns to Granada
By Steven Libowitz   |   December 28, 2021

One of the reasons Bob Bernhardt has secured several long-term gigs as Principal Pops Conductor at several symphonies simultaneously — including the Louisville Orchestra (where his tenure spans four decades), the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera (19 seasons), and the Grand Rapids Symphony (seven years) — is his versatility and adaptability in leading an ensemble and […]

A Birthday Bash for the Ages
By Richard Mineards   |   November 2, 2021

Montecito über philanthropist Sara Miller McCune certainly knows how to celebrate! For her 80th birthday Sara, a longtime fan of New York’s Great White Way, underwrote the costs of Kismet, which opened on Broadway in 1953 and the following year won a Tony Award for best musical. “Over the years, the music and the words […]

‘Kismet’ Fated to Make Santa Barbara History
By Steven Libowitz   |   October 21, 2021

The dictionary says “kismet” is an Arabic word that has come to mean fate or destiny in English. In theater, Kismet was a hit on Broadway back in the 1950s, as the love-and-duty musical about a glib-tongued street poet in old Baghdad whose family encounters princesses and a young caliph was smartly adapted from a […]

Heading Into the Home Stretch
By Sara Miller McCune   |   October 12, 2021

As I write this early in October, I can really feel my heart beating just a little bit faster. Kismet, that wonderful musical show, is coming to life once again — right here in Santa Barbara. For one thing, the first week of rehearsals late September in New York City are now over. For that […]

Grand Reveal
By Richard Mineards   |   September 28, 2021

It was music to everyone’s ears when veteran maestro Nir Kabaretti outlined the Santa Barbara Symphony’s upcoming season at the venerable Granada Theatre at a program reveal party at the Lobero. Symphony chairman Janet Garufis enthused: “It will be so nice to hear live music in person again. We are active and thriving!” The season […]

Quite the Crescendo
By Richard Mineards   |   August 31, 2021

Santa Barbara Symphony celebrated the founding members of the Crescendo Society, a group of visionary supporters who have each made a five-year pledge to support the orchestra at levels ranging from $2,500 to $100,000, with a boffo brunch at the Santa Barbara Club. This means the next four seasons of the symphony, under maestro Nir […]

Let the Shows Begin!
By Richard Mineards   |   July 15, 2021

Santa Barbara’s venerable Granada Theatre is back in business! The eight-story icon that towers over State Street, originally built in 1873 and rebuilt in 1924, has been eerily silent for the past 15 months, other than intermittent audience-free video filming by the Santa Barbara Symphony under maestro Nir Kabaretti. But it will finally be all […]

Getting High Notes
By Richard Mineards   |   May 20, 2021

The light truly is at the end of the tunnel! As an example, Santa Barbara Symphony, under longtime maestro Nir Kabaretti, invited 100 suitably vaccinated VIP supporters to the Granada, to watch the talented musicians perform Beethoven’s “Symphony No.7,” part of the season’s Triumph finale, which honors strength, perseverance, hope, creativity, and community. All of […]

A Spring Sing
By Richard Mineards   |   April 29, 2021

Opera Santa Barbara hosted an evening of high note with its fifth annual Sings For You! at the University Club, with soprano Alaysha Fox from the Young Artists Program of the Los Angeles Opera and Nicholas Roehler at the piano. With an eclectic program of works from Wagner, Verdi, Strauss, Cole Porter, Rodgers, and Hart, […]

Patriotic Pandemic Performance
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 22, 2021

“Nay, why reproach each other, be unkind,For there’s no plane on which we two may meet?” The words might be a little too poetic and eloquent for modern times, but the sentiment is surely something that might have been spoken aloud on the floor of the U.S. Senate this week, say, perhaps by a centrist […]