The thing about symphonic pops concerts is that while you need to be super serious about how the orchestra performs the music, you also have to recognize that pops concerts are supposed to be fun. This isn’t Mahler, after all.  That’s no issue with Stuart Malina, who will be making his local debut wielding the […]

When Michael Holliday, Lawrence Scarpa, and Angela Brooks were juggling their T-squares, balsa wood, and glue guns at the University of Florida in Gainesville (go Gators), they likely didn’t foresee the momentous project on which they would be collaborating in far-flung 2025.  Even as these architects-in-training made final preparations to enter the profession, some 2,500 […]

Back in 2017 when Susan Keller founded Santa Barbara Revels to make our city one of several in the nation to present annual Christmas-season traditional cross-cultural shows, she turned to fellow Montecitan Maggie Mixsell to serve as director. The acting coach, teacher, and director – whose credits include running the Speaking of Stories series for […]

‘Twas the weekend before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. Unless “house” refers to the Granada, where all sorts of creatures, including mice, rats, and other critters and characters won’t just be stirring but also leaping, pirouetting, gliding, and spinning all over the stage as State […]

Hilton Santa Barbara Beachfront Resort is the hot spot for a special holiday show tribute to Frank Sinatra on Saturday night. A Very Sinatra Christmas Special features a number of jazz vocalists singing a catalog of holiday tunes favored over the years by the legend also known as The Chairman of the Board, including “White […]

Outside of SoCal, Mike Campbell is largely known as a founding member of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the lead guitarist who spent decades alongside Petty delivering crunchy guitar lines on a bevy of big hits. Campbell also co-wrote many of the band’s singles, including “Refugee,” “Here Comes My Girl,” “You Got Lucky,” and “Runnin’ […]

Nick Carraway, Jay Gatsby, Daisy Buchanan and the other debonair, desperate, debauched, or devoted characters from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s iconic story come to life via dance in World Ballet Company’s The Great Gatsby Ballet. The story of an enigmatic nouveau riche millionaire ambitiously pursuing the American Dream has been considered a literary classic since the […]

Even prisoners locked away in solitary confinement in a tiny 6 by 9 foot cell get almost 55 square feet to themselves. But the 350 artists participating in Ready to Hang get just a single square foot on which to express themselves in the annual community-wide exhibition from the Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative in its […]

The Santa Barbara Blues Society hosts the local debut of East Coast-based award-winning blues singer-songwriter Vanessa Collier. The rare female bandleading saxophonist, a native Texan, grew up in Maryland and graduated from Boston’s famed Berklee School of Music. She spent two years in blues legend Joe Louis Walker’s band before branching out on her own. […]

As a sold-out crowd – many dressed in colorful ‘60s and ‘70s garb – tooled down the aisles, the band exhorted them to “Come-on Baby, Light My Fire.” Thus began another amazing evening of rocking music brought to us by the collaboration of the Doublewide Kings and Nir Kabaretti and the Santa Barbara Symphony. The […]