Sizzling Season

UCSB Arts & Lectures 61st season promises to be a cracker!

With 60 world class events, including 11 Santa Barbara debuts, two world premieres of new works commissioned by the popular program, a U.S. premiere, and a West Coast debut, Miller McCune executive director Celesta Billeci described it as events for the “intellectually curious, the artistically adventurous, and culturally passionate.”

As the 200 guests at the Rockwood Woman’s Club for the launch party listened to music by the bluegrass band Salty Strings and noshed on canapés from Justin West‘s SoulCal Smokehouse, the new brochures with the season’s performances were handed out to eager recipients, including Dan and Meg Burnham, Tom and Heather Sturgess, Rob and Prudence Sternin, Richard and Annette Caleel, Robert Weinman, Gretchen Lieff and Miles Hartfeld, Henry and Dilling Yang, Drew Wakefield, Sara Miller McCune, Nancy Bell Coe, Janet Garufis, Debra Stewart, Rod Lathim, Bruce Heavin, Nancy McGrath, and Richard and Lucille Janssen.

The shows include the Martha Graham Dance Company, violinist Itzhak Perlman, pianist Yuja Wang, the Danish String Quartet, Philip Glass, the Santa Barbara debuts of singer Kristin Chenoweth and the Dance Theatre of Harlem, and the return of Pink Martini, whose Arlington performances always leave us shaken and stirred.

Fasten your seatbelts…