The Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art and Westmont Music Department threw a grand party on Jan. 3 in honor of the late Lady Leslie Ridley-Tree, whose generosity benefited not only the college but the entire Santa Barbara community. The Westmont String Quartet played as celebrants enjoyed champagne and crêpe while taking in the stunning ocean […]
The week kicked off with another UCSB Arts & Lectures concert at the Music Academy’s Hahn Hall with cellist Zlatomir Fung and pianist Benjamin Hochman with a mixed program featuring works by Britten, Schumann, Tsintsadze, and Marshall Estrin, a longtime collaborator of Fung’s. Estrin’s composition “Cinematheque” was based on the creative pair’s mutual love of […]
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On January 25th the Anaheim Convention Center ballroom was rocked by the Women’s International Music Network (WiMN) She Rocks Awards. The group was founded in 2012 by Laura B. Whitmore to create a support system for women in the Music Industry and honor them via the annual awards presented with support by the NAMM Foundation. […]
The National Association of Music Merchants held their annual NAMM Show at the Anaheim Convention Center on January 24 – 28. It featured over 3,000 brands, 500 events, 200 performances, over 200 educational tracks, with members from 101 countries. It was indeed booth intensive, with brands stacked together on the floor. Here is part 1of […]
Magnificent classical music reigned supreme with three impressive concerts in our Eden by the Beach, two at the venerable Granada and one at the Music Academy’s Hahn Hall. Kicking off the week was the Community Arts Music Association’s first concert of the new year with London’s 79-year-old Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Russian conductor Vasily Petrenko, […]
It wasn’t pre-ordained that Los Lonely Boys member Ringo Garza, Jr. – who was named after a John Wayne movie, not the ex-Beatle – was going to end up being the sibling band’s drummer. It had a lot more to do with the fact that, not only was he the youngest sibling of the three […]
In the film Pretty Woman, courtesan Vivian catches lightning in a bottle when she meets Richard Gere’s charming and chivalrous billionaire businessman. Being cast in the title role of the film’s touring stage musical serves as a similarly unlikely lucky break for Ellie Baker. A really big break. Not only does Pretty Woman: The Musical represent […]
It might be her breathy and vibratoless soprano that somehow suggests both urgency and a leisurely, steady pace. Maybe it’s her knack for rhymes that never feel forced, or her commitment to a more universal truth in her songwriting. Or her ability to erase any divide between passionate politics and personal songs. Whatever the reason, […]
For two decades, Siegwart ‘Zig’ Reichwald, Westmont’s Adams professor of music and worship, engrossed himself in the sacred music of German composer and performer Felix Mendelssohn. But when he came to his works written for the Berlin Cathedral in 1843-44, he was struck by how unusual they were compared to the rest of Mendelssohn’s musical […]
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Guitarist Chris Shiflett grew up on Santa Barbara’s Eastside just a short walk from the Santa Barbara Bowl, the local amphitheater he would eventually play with as the lead guitarist in Foo Fighters. But back in the ‘70s and ‘80s it was the bar scene and house parties for Shiflett, who went to the junior […]
Anthony Kearns, Ronan Tynan, and Declan Kelly, better known as the Irish Tenors, are all well on in years and miles on the road, but have piled into one hotel room in Plymouth, Massachusetts, like a band out on its first tour. The Tenors have a history of hits with classics from the Emerald Isle […]
Ensemble’s Johnny Cash tribute/story-through-song musical revue winds up its run at the New Vic with a final extended weekend through December 17. The Alcazar Theatre in Carpinteria has a second and final weekend helping of its homegrown adaptation of Miracle on 34th Street featuring an all-local cast and production crew, also closing December 17, the […]
In a strange coincidence, three Broadway music revues have arrived on our shores in sequence, and, as it turns out, you have your choice to see any of them for one night on Thursday, December 7. The Cher Show winds up its two-day run at the Granada, Ensemble’s Ring of Fire: The Music of Johnny […]
Most folks in town are familiar with Grace Fisher, the Santa Barbara native who contracted a virus that spread to her spine and left her paralyzed from the neck down in her senior year in high school in 2014. The story bears repeating, especially at this time of year, as Fisher quickly turned her tragedy […]
