It wasn’t quite Tin Pan Alley, but the Music Academy’s latest chamber night at Lehmann Hall as the 76th annual Summer Festival winds down was pretty novel when a talented quartet played Bay Area composer Gabriella Smith’s work “Anthozoa.” Inspired by a diving trip to French Polynesia, Smith, 31, used two baking tins and even […]
My congratulations to three good friends, philanthropists Brooks and Kate Firestone and author Fannie Flagg, as well as one of my favorite theater companies, Ensemble, who have been chosen as Granada Theatre Legends. They will be honored at a glittering 7th annual gala at the iconic State Street theater on September 16. The highly anticipated […]
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Tony Morris has begun his second year of a two-year term as president of Montecito Rotary Club as the organization celebrates its 70th anniversary. Joining Morris on the board are president-elect Kim Stone, secretary Roger Davis, and treasurer Kurt Koenig. From volunteering at the Montecito Fire Department’s annual July 4 pancake breakfast and continuing its […]
My item last week on the historic Lobero Theatre being chosen as one of the world’s 11 most beautiful by society glossy Town & Country prompted a call from Montecito philanthropist Anne Towbes saying that another of the theaters on the list, Steinmetz Hall in Orlando, Florida, was designed by Montecito architectBarton Myers, 88. The […]
Society gadabout Rick Oshay and Teresa Kuskey Nowak, bubbly founder of the La Boheme dance company, hosted their 4th annual Viva La Fiesta bash at Fieldside, the popular Santa Barbara Polo Club restaurant, for 200 gloriously garbed guests. The fun fête featured Teresa’s colorful dancers who led our Eden by the Beach’s Summer Solstice parade, […]
Italian composer Puccini’s beloved opera La bohème took on a whole new tone at the Granada as part of the Music Academy’s 76th annual Summer Festival. Instead of Paris’ Latin Quarter in the 1830s, as in the original 1895 work, the setting was Brooklyn and Manhattan in 2011, a time of restless energy and a […]
Violinist extraordinaire Augustin Hadelich was back in our Eden by the Beach for the second time in two months when he performed at the Lobero as part of the Music Academy’s summer fest. Grammy Award winner Hadelich, who I saw at a CAMA Masterseries concert in April, his fifth appearance for the organization since 2015, […]
To the historic Santa Barbara Club for an enthralling talk by prolific Hope Ranch-based author Lis Wiehl organized by Montecito Bank and Trust’s MClub. One of America’s most prominent trial lawyers, the Harvard Law School graduate served as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle and was a regular contributor on NBC, […]
Melinda Cabrera, who as Vice President of United Way of Santa Barbara County helped spearhead the organization’s robust response to the COVID-19 pandemic, has been named president and CEO of the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara. “Melinda comes to us with an impressive record of community engagement and energetic leadership,” says foundation board chair Danna […]
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Montecito actor Billy Baldwin got a considerable shock with a blast from the past this week. He has revealed he went to school with accused New York mass murderer Rex Heuermann, 59, the alleged serial killer of 10 women on a barren stretch of Long Island coastline nearly 13 years ago, who was snared by […]
Retired Montecito corporate attorney David Gersh has published his latest art mystery tome featuring Jonathan Benjamin Franklin, All’s Fair. It is the fourth in the series and one of eight books David, a Harvard Law School graduate, has written. “This is undoubtedly the best art scam work I have ever created,” he enthuses. The novel […]
Independence Day lived up to all its expectations with the annual village parade wending its circuitous new route along Coast Village and Hot Springs roads watched by colorful crowds, including Meghan Markle and Prince Harry holding his two-year-old daughter Lilibet. Having played King George III with the late Santa Barbara Polo Club publicist Charles Ward […]
Santa Barbara Historical Museum’s latest exhibition, Project Fiesta, marking the 99th anniversary of Old Spanish Days, was a Herculean task. Museum president Dacia Harwood and her colleagues had to sort through thousands of photos in the institution’s Gledhill Library to pick just 99 shots, mostly black and white, taken since Fiesta was founded in 1924. […]
To the Music Academy for an entertaining lunch with New Yorker music critic Alex Ross, who is doing a short residency at the Miraflores campus, teaching 10 students, whittled down from 25 applicants, how to write succinct and entertaining program notes on the summer festival concerts. Los Angeles-based Cross, 55, a graduate of Harvard, has […]
