TEDxSantaBarbara founder and executive producer Mark Sylvester realized early on as COVID-19 crept into our consciousness that he’d probably have to cancel his annual convention that each fall brings together as many as 10 speakers with local spins on the TED trio of topics (technology, entertainment, and design). That’s when the disappointment set in. “It […]
Gordon Frickers, an old friend who used to be my photographer on The Falmouth Packet when I started my career, has morphed into a very competent maritime artist. Now living in Brittany in the north of France after 25 years in the seafaring city of Plymouth, Devon, Gordon has just completed a two-year project of […]
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TEDxSantaBarbara founder and executive producer Mark Sylvester realized early on as COVID-19 crept into our consciousness that he’d probably have to cancel his annual convention that each fall brings together as many as 10 speakers with local spins on the TED trio of topics (technology, entertainment, and design). That’s when the disappointment set in. “It was nagging […]
The Moon Kids rock band is taking on new steam with a local film contract and music videos. But these working class heroes from Scotland wouldn’t have been known in the U.S. without the magic of the legendary Rodney Bingenheimer, who is renowned for discovering numerous bands. He came across The Moon Kids when he was […]
Following the imposition of stricter protocols to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, the area’s only planned live performance of The Nutcracker, a Concerts in Your Car production from Ventura Ballet, was canceled. Musician and theater impresario Hershey Felder, though, performs a pandemic pivot to point his next streaming production, Hershey Felder, TCHAIKOVSKY, toward the composer’s score […]
No one could fault Santa Barbara singer-songwriter-guitarist Jackson Gillies for letting early success go to his head. After all, while still battling both Type 1 diabetes and a painful skin condition called hidradenitis suppurativa, Gillies was a surprise winner of the 2016 local Teen Star competition at a sold-out Arlington Theatre at age 15, sang […]
If a sudden affliction of acute flaccid myelitis resulting in becoming a quadriplegic wasn’t enough to stop Santa Barbaran Grace Fisher from pursuing her musical dreams, the coronavirus pandemic couldn’t contain her from continuing her community Christmas celebration. This year’s Winter Music Showcase from her Grace Fisher Foundation – which was pre-recorded using proper protocols […]
Ensemble Theatre Company is bursting with some holiday pride about a new show streaming virtually out of Las Vegas this weekend. That’s because the star of The Elijah Rock Variety Show Christmas Special played Porgy in ETC’s 2017 production of Porgy and Bess, an ambitious, critically acclaimed and socially prescient adaptation of the show that […]
Three years ago, a few of us attended Brad Nack’s 21st annual 100 percent Reindeer Art Show – a perpetually packed reception at Roy where folks jostle each other to get first dibs at the new paintings – decked out in N95 respirator masks to shield against inhaling smoke and particles from the then still-growing […]
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Every November, I look forward to the Holiday Home Tour in nearby Ojai that benefits the annual Ojai Music Festival, now entering its 75th year. Organized by the OMF Women’s Committee, this year, due to COVID, they have done a terrific job of creating a video tour of three lovely homes. Narrated by architect/designers Steve […]
Famed Santa Barbara photographer Macduff Everton and veteran journalist-writer Matt Kettmann, who are both graduates of UCSB, first collaborated on Around the Table: Recipes & Stories From The Lark in Santa Barbara, which was managed by Everton, who also took the photographs, while Kettmann contributed a chapter on wine history in town. Nearly four years […]
Retired Montecito attorney David Gersh has just completed his new novel Pot Luck, the sequel to his laugh-out-loud award-winning book Desperate Shop Girls, which is being published by Open Books in the New Year. It is the Harvard Law School graduate’s sixth tome, to be closely followed by his seventh, The Whisper of a Distant […]
A cabaret for Christmas might seem like the mixing of metaphors, but the idea made a lot of sense for PCPA as a way to produce something during the pandemic. That was partly because a show that’s akin to a revue could be done from people’s homes during lockdown without damaging the storyline. But it […]
The extensive Chinese collection of the late society doyenne Beverley Jackson is being sold by Kaminski Auctions in, appropriately enough, Beverly, Massachusetts. The former society editor of the News-Press for 22 years, who died in August aged 91, was an avowed Sinophile after a visit to China during the Cultural Revolution changed her life. The […]
