Tag archives: Santa Barbara Symphony
Still pivoting due to the pandemic, the Santa Barbara Symphony is squeezing in the pair of postponed performances featuring violin superstar Anne Akiko Meyers as guest soloist beginning just a week after the ensemble offered the world premiere of Concerto for Piano Four Hands and String Orchestra by composer Richard Dünser via Brahms and Schumann. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Santa Barbara Symphony returned to its popular New Year’s Eve tradition at the Granada to dazzle the audience with the music of Gershwin, movie classics, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Motown, Broadway, and other celebratory symphonic favorites while donning party hats and quaffing champagne. Regular Pops conductor Bob Bernhardt, celebrating his 40th anniversary with the Louisville Orchestra, […]
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 […]
Theater came roaring back to life in town since last we published these pages known as the Sentinel, with every local company save for Ventura’s Rubicon offering something to savor. I caught three of the productions, including the biggest of them all in the revival of Kismet,executive produced and presented by philanthropist/publisher Sara Miller McCune. […]
Moving on with Music Academy connections, Baroque master Nic McGegan — who led chamber orchestra fellow concerts for MAW’s summer festival for several seasons dating back a few years — makes his debut as guest conductor of the Santa Barbara Symphony for its Royal Fireworks program November 13 and 14 at the Granada Theatre. The […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
One of the more interesting things I have learned now that we are getting closer to our Kismet performance dates in late October is the fact that all businesses are full of details — and then still more details. This should not have come as a surprise to me since I started my own publishing […]
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 […]
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 […]
It’s no surprise that UCSB Arts & Lectures has turned to the XIV Dalai Lama for the keynote event in its year-long 2021-2022 Creating Hope programming initiative. After all, not only has His Holiness, who is believed to be a manifestation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, spent much of his life encouraging people to be […]
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 […]
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, […]
Our troubles coping with the COVID pandemic have stretched beyond the one-year mark. But that’s a short blip of time compared to the arduous ordeal of relating conflict, rage, war, and more over three millennia — with no end in sight. Such is the plight of the storyteller in An Iliad, the modern-day adaptation of […]
Back in 1988 nobody could have predicted the success or impact of Storm Reading, a theatrical play starring and based on the life experiences of Neil Marcus, a humorist-philosopher who lives with a neurological disorder called Dystonia that dramatically impacts his ability to speak and control movement. That includes Rod Lathim, who as head of […]
