COVID-19 can’t conquer the community created by the Santa Barbara-Kotor Sister City Committee. While at this point nobody is able – or willing – to cross the ocean to meet and make music in person, the organization that fosters cooperation between our seaside city and the coastal town in Montenegro has booked a fundraising event […]
The unprecedented stay-at-home orders because of the pandemic have been a double whammy for service nonprofits such as the Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse, whose mission is to provide services for preventing and treating alcoholism and drug abuse to youth, adults, and families throughout Santa Barbara County. Not only has 70-year-old CADA had to […]
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After spending more than a quarter century happily ensconced at the campground halfway up the San Marcos Pass that gave the festival its name, the Live Oak Music Festival that takes place over Father’s Day weekend every year packed up to return to its roots in San Luis Obispo two summers ago. Now, in the […]
Back in January, 2020 was looking to be a pretty exciting year for the Music Academy of the West. Not only had the summer music institute respected around the world just hired Jamie Broumas, the former Director of Classical and New Music Programs at Washington’s famed Kennedy Center, for the newly created position of Chief […]
Clarinetist Narek Arutyunian was supposed to make his Ojai debut on May 3 for the Chamber On The Mountain series that honors the traditional while celebrating the innovative. However the COVID-19 pandemic had other plans, so instead Arutyunian recorded a concert from his home in Queens, New York, exclusively for Chamber On The Mountain donors, […]
Having your CEO depart in the middle of a pandemic that caused cancellation of the rest of the season’s concerts probably isn’t the best thing for building the confidence of the local classical music community. Fortunately, the Santa Barbara Symphony was able to announce its Interim CEO, Kathryn Martin, even before the then-current Executive Director/CEO […]
When Jose Lobero expanded the old adobe Sebastopol schoolhouse and created his Opera House between 1871 and 1873, Chinatown was already established on the first block of East Canon Perdido street. At that time, the street was nothing more than a narrow dirt track and an article from November 1873 stated, “This narrow and disagreeable […]
In the pre-pandemic era, last weekend would have marked the Topanga Banjo Fiddle Contest and Folk Festival’s 60th annual event, a downhome acoustic instrument extravaganza that is rivaled around these parts only by Santa Barbara’s own similarly-themed Fiddle Convention and Festival, which still has high hopes of holding its event in the fall. Instead, Topanga […]
Among the other area artists who are performing frequently via Facebook Live, Instagram or Zoom are the great Glen Phillips, the frontman for Santa Barbara-born pop band Toad the Wet Sprocket and a significant solo singer-songwriter. Phillips, who lived for more than two decades in Montecito, has been playing live acoustic living room sessions several […]
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Tina Schlieske and her sister Laura are sheltering in place separately in Santa Barbara, but it’s hard to keep sisters apart for weeks on end, especially if they get along as well as the Schlieskes, who have been making music together for nearly all of their lives. Tina is best known for her solo gigs […]
We all need some comic relief in the time of corona, and there’s plenty of distractions around to tickle our funny bones. While watching CBS This Morning news last week, I caught a segment that featured a re-envisioned Fleetwood Mac cover which was originally created by Santa Barbara designer Larry Vigon. Someone had manipulated the […]
If the coronavirus hadn’t turned so quickly into a pandemic, Mick and Tess Pulver would likely have been back in Santa Barbara earlier this month to conduct a “Song of the Soul” workshop, a two-day exploration to find “the song inside you that’s just waiting to break out.” The weekend event is a truncated version […]
The Santa Barbara Jazz Society doesn’t have much in its own archives to air during our shelter-in-place era, but the folks who run it are offering some links to fill in the gaps until the nonprofit can stage its next monthly concert at SOhO after the all clear order. If live is king, you’ll want […]
Montecito’s singer-songwriter hero is logging his time during the pandemic. Kenny Loggins is staying at home during the shelter-in-place era as the COVID-19 pandemic stopped everything in its tracks. Actually, make that homes. The 72-year-old singer-songwriter, who began scoring hits back in the early 1970s in a duo with Jim Messina, found fertile ground with […]






