Cathy Murillo hosted the 14th annual Mayor’s Awards breakfast honoring businesses for facilitating employment for those with disabilities at the Carrillo Recreation Center. The Non-Profit award went to the Santa Barbara Zoo, the first menagerie on the Left Coast to become a certified autism center, while the outstanding effort accolade was given to the 45-year-old […]
Guitarist Al Di Meola was merely fantasizing when he told a friend back in 1974 that he’d “give anything” to be able to play in Chick Corea’s Return To Forever jazz fusion band. After all, the Jersey City-bred Di Meola was only 19 and still studying at Berklee College of Music in Boston. But the […]
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The Marjorie Luke Theatre at Santa Barbara Junior High was packed to the eaves when Montecito rocker Kenny Loggins, in collaboration with Janet Adderley’s Advanced Conservatory, celebrated the music of Footloose on its 35th anniversary. Kenny, who also showed some fancy footwork, composed theme music that would become the 1984 film and, later, a Broadway […]
Here’s one you don’t want to miss if you can help it: The Broadway Musical Cruise aboard the Condor Express. Owner Hiroko Benko invites one and all to come aboard and enjoy the best of Broadway on a smooth Saturday evening cruise with live and on-deck performers Deborah Bertling and Carol Ann Manzi, accompanied by […]
Despite the fact that she has spent a large part of her adult life in musical theater, Arizona Theater Company’s Chanel Bragg was initially reluctant to listen to the 2015 original cast recording of Hamilton: An American Musical, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “sung-and-rapped through” show that had opened on Broadway only a few months earlier. “I’m from […]
Saundra McClain would seem to be an inspired choice to direct Ensemble Theatre Company’s area debut of Dancing Lessons even if she hadn’t already helmed several successful prior productions for ETC, including Intimate Apparel, In The Continuum, The Fantasticks, and Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. While McClain found her earlier ETC efforts […]
Karen Zacarías’ theatrical adaptation of Into the Beautiful North, which gets its area debut in six performances over 10 days beginning Friday by UCSB Theater Department, is based on the novel by Pulitzer Prize finalist Luís Alberto Urrea – which served as the selection for UCSB Reads back in 2017. Urrea was inspired by the […]
Montecito Rotary Club has awarded ten $1,250 scholarships to high-performing City College vocational and career technology students. “For more than 25 years, the club has made scholarships available, with the total amount of support provided during this time exceeding $120,000,” says club foundation president, the aptly named Cathy Cash. “The club membership believes in the […]
Billionaire Los Angeles developer Rick Caruso nearly came a cropper at the final hurdle when developing the Rosewood Miramar, he has revealed. Rick was at a ribbon cutting ceremony at the oh-so tony five star resort and recounted he was in our Eden by the Beach for the final hearing on his $200 million development, […]
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To the uninitiated, the Lucidity Festival, which offers its eighth iteration this weekend, might still come off as a haven for hardcore drug users, a three-day escape for spaced-out revelers intent on leaving reality behind. But maybe that mistaken notion will finally be put to rest, as Lucidity was recognized as the world’s best family-friendly […]
Rock singer Ronnie Platt had been making most of his money as a truck driver in Chicago for the better part of 25 years – singing along to Kansas’ “Dust in the Wind” and “Carry On Wayward Son” on classic rock radio in the cab – when someone forwarded him the press release indicating that […]
Derrick Curtis is justifiably proud of his two decades of producing BASSH, the locals-only teachers and dancers social dance showcase that marks its 19th year on the stage this weekend. Nearly left for dead after his producing partner Santa Barbara Dance Alliance dissolved and leaving the Lobero almost a decade ago, Curtis more or less […]
A mandatory evacuation scuppered my chances of watching the first show of Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet at the Granada, which featured George Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments, but I was able to catch the second day’s three-part performance under Scottish artistic director Ashley Wheater. The show kicked off impressively with Justin Peck‘s In Creases featuring two grand […]
As part of their Advanced Placement English studies, the students in Laguna Blanca English teacher Charles Donelan‘s class integrate the art of dance into their study of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in an annual program titled, Library Dances. The students study with the State Street Ballet, various musicians, and newly added this year, artist-practitioner from Shakespeare’s […]






