Tag archives: SOhO

Jason Libs didn’t migrate to Los Angeles and Santa Barbara from the Midwest via Miami, Nashville, and Barbados to play six nights a week in a piano bar. It just kind of worked out that way. “I came out here to be a songwriter and to sell my songs to, and produce for, other artists,” […]

UCSB Dance Company’s 2023 company consists entirely of female or non-binary dancers, which wasn’t a conscious choice but simply the result of having no male senior dance majors on campus this year. But rather than fighting against what is, Artistic Director Delila Moseley decided to double down.  “I just decided to go with it, and […]

Still stuck about where to take your sweetheart for Valentine’s Day? SOhO might have the solution. Veteran Santa Barbara songbird Shawn Thies, who has emotional richness amid the silky smoothness, is bringing along a bunch of her musical friends for a Tuesday, Feb. 14, dinner show at 7 p.m. at the restaurant-nightclub, including local stalwarts […]

Two local singer-songwriters whose stars continue to rise are heading back to SOhO in an early-year best bet on January 12. Mendeleyev, whose folks named him after the Russian chemist best known for creating a version of the periodic table of elements, continues his own creative ways with a diverse catalog that ranges from fervent […]

Two admirably accomplished acoustic guitar concerts are also arriving at SOhO this week, starting with Latin Grammy winner Diego Garcia of Twanguero fame, the Spanish songwriter famous for his impeccable fingerpicking style that earned him a moniker of a “fire-breathing guitar hero.” The December 4 show, which closes SBAcoustic’s fall season, will focus on his […]

The Mother Hips, one of Chico State’s great gifts to the world of pop, are not only still going strong more than three decades since forming on the college campus, co-founders Tim Bluhm and Greg Loiacono have another new album about to be released. When We Disappear, due January 27, comes hot on the heels […]

The Music Academy launches its new season of projecting Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD series at the recently technically upgraded Hahn Hall with Luigi Cherubini’s rarely performed Medea, with Met soprano star Sondra Radvanovsky as the mythic sorceress who will stop at nothing in her quest for vengeance. The Met-premiere production recorded live transmission at […]

Breezing into town after a three-year hiatus, Johnny Irion and his band U.S. Elevator, with members Erich Riedl, Brett Long, Nate Modisette, and Anders Bergstrom, took the stage to a standing-room only show at SOhO on Sunday, October 9. Irion started with a solo acoustic set on guitar and piano. Invited guest Khasy Modisette sang […]

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, whose history dates back to just one year after CAMA hosted its first concert with the brand-new Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1919, reached international fame under British conductor Sir Simon Rattle, who was recently in town himself to lead the London Symphony Orchestra at the Granada Theatre for the […]

UCSB Arts & Lectures caps off the opening week of its new season in a culturally significant and community-oriented way, hosting a Ukraine Fest in front of the Granada before Kyiv-based band DakhaBrakha takes the stage inside for its Santa Barbara debut on Thursday, October 6. The free festival, which takes place during the monthly […]

Last summer, the community theater company at Carpinteria’s Alcazar Theatre launched Laugh Out Loud, a one-weekend summer series of several short comedic plays, both to keep its actors and the community engaged, and to test the waters of producing live theater during the pandemic.  Audiences responded, filling up more than half of the seats at […]

Back in 2019, veteran UCSB dance professor Valerie Huston and Arizona State University’s dance faculty member Carley Conder teamed up to create Avian for UCSB’s dance students. This casual piece was inspired by Huston overhearing two students talking about a class they were taking called The Mathematics of Origami and featured nine-foot origami birds above […]

Tribute bands are all the rage in music clubs and even theaters these days, and it’s not hard to understand why. Not only is it easier to imitate than innovate, but it’s also relatively simple to put a band together to perform the best-known songs from a classic rock band or famous singer, because so […]

SOhO’s schedule this week showcases a bunch of Santa Barbara-based acts covering a huge swath of genres. Soul Majestic, which seamlessly segues from roots reggae to R&B and folk-rock, headlines on Friday, February 19, followed the next night by M.O.B. Quintet, an all-star ensemble that performs an eclectic blend of Euro-Brazil progressive jazz and fusion […]

SOhO has secured a bit of a booking coup for the end of the month in Molly Tuttle, the singer-songwriter-guitarist who became the first woman to win the International Bluegrass Music Awards’ Guitar Player of the Year awards in 2017 and repeated in 2018, when she was also named the Americana Music Association’s Instrumentalist of […]

The COVID pandemic has been an ongoing career if not a personal crisis for a lot of musicians around the world. But for Drew McManus, the shutdown actually afforded him a chance to slow down, regroup and, most importantly, reconnect with his roots in the mountains of Montana. Although he was born in the western […]

There’s a plethora of a cappella singing groups at Yale, the Ivy League School known for theater and music as much as the liberal arts. “I think there’s 16, including four all-male,” said Jacob Wu, the current tour manager and a bass singer for Baker’s Dozen (BD), which despite its name actually boasts 16 singers. […]

Prior to November, you’d be hard-pressed to recall the last time John Jorgenson played in town. Best known for his inventive guitar work in Desert Rose, the mid-1980s California country-rock band he co-founded with former Byrd/Flying Burrito Brother Chris Hillman and country-bluegrass stalwart Herb Pedersen, Jorgenson also played in the guitar trio Hellecasters, toured for […]

Singer-songwriter Marc Broussard made his stage debut before he reached first grade, belting out “Johnny B. Goode” at age 5 as a guest singer in his father, Louisiana Hall of Fame guitarist Ted Broussard’s, famous band The Boogie Kings. Swamp pop and blue-eyed soul runs through his veins and makes up his bones. But classic […]

John Jorgenson has been playing a multitude of instruments since childhood, dating back to age eight, when he picked up the clarinet to go along with piano, which he’d been studying for four years to keep pace with his older sister in a family of musicians. Then it was guitar after hearing the Beatles, and […]