3 May 2022
The Small Home Upgrade That Could Save Your Home in a Wildfire
Whether you are in the process of renovating your home or still in the planning and dreaming phase, your Montecito Fire Department has a project to add to your list – the vents. Hear us out. Overhauling your vents may not be nearly as satisfying as a new kitchen, but having new vents could be […]
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A May Book Buffet
Imagine yourself, a newly married woman who wakes in Lisbon to find your husband has vanished, the police don’t believe you are innocent, and suddenly danger lurks around every corner. That is the opening of Chris Pavone’s Two Nights in Lisbon. What follows is an unpredictable, twisty story that will have you guessing to the […]
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Looking Back Lafondly
Pierre Lafond passed away this past Sunday at the age of 92, after 60 years in Santa Barbara enterprise overlapping a 25-year career in architecture. Pierre Lafond and his wife, Wendy Foster, developed a number of shops in Montecito and in greater Santa Barbara. And they were vintners and early adopters of Central Coast viticulture, […]
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Everyday Sacred: Every Opportunity is a Blessing
Chernor Diallo arrived at LAX after a long, exhausting flight in May 2021. His host for his two-year stay in Santa Barbara met him. He had come a very long way in both time and space. He had imagined that Santa Barbara would have skyscrapers and wide boulevards, like other American cities. But when he […]
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Westmont Professors Say Farewell
Montecito is losing two of its musical stalwarts with the retirement of Westmont College professors Michael Shasberger and Grey Brothers. The dynamic duo were fêted at a dinner for 200 guests at Page Hall along with three other members of the faculty retiring, with 142 years of teaching at Westmont collectively between them. Michael, who […]
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A Groovy Cause
Baubles, bangles, beads, and bandanas were de rigueur when Santa Barbara Choral Society hosted a Groovy Gala at the Rockwood Woman’s Club, with 100 Woodstock-garbed guests raising around $50,000. Co-chairs Margo Callis and Debra Stewart gushed: “It’s so wonderful to be back. Music pulls everyone’s soul like nothing else!” Veteran music director JoAnne Wasserman, with […]
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Clapping to the Sound of Four Hands
It was certainly a hands-on performance when Berlin-based piano twosome Sivan Silver and Gil Garburg sharing the keyboard performed the world premiere of 62-year-old Austrian Richard Dunser’s composition derived from the work of Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms with the Santa Barbara Symphony for Romance in a New Key at the Granada. Dunser dedicated his […]
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Fun Over Yonder Ridge
Cowboy hats proliferated when Riviera Ridge School hosted a Western-themed fundraiser with 200 guests raising a hefty $300,000 for school activities and faculty. The boffo Home on the Ridge! bash, co-chaired by Tina Wood and Andrea McFarling, kicked off with a champagne-fueled VIP reception at the home of head of school Christina Broderick, complete with […]
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Isabel’s Bella Tune
It was an evening of decidedly high note when Lebanese-born soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian performed in a Glorious and Free concert at the Lobero, part of CAMA’s – the Community Arts Music Association – Masterseries. The performance of Romani-inspired songs and operetta arias featured works by Dvorak, Brahms, Lehar, Salman, and Yvain sung effortlessly by the […]
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Siblings Play and Impress
As British cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason had performed at their royal wedding at historic St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, in 2018 and watched by two billion people globally, it was hoped that Prince Harry and wife Meghan Markle might attend his entertaining concert with his pianist sister, Isata, at UCSB’s Campbell Hall, part of the popular Arts […]
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Saint Kirst
My congratulations to my friend and Journal colleague Lynn Kirst who has achieved sainthood! Our illustrious organ’s bridle correspondent has been selected to portray Saint Barbara in this year’s Old Spanish Days fiesta by the 121-year-old Reina Del Mar No.126 of Native Daughters of the Golden West. In a tradition that dates back to 1926, […]
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DeVine Direction at Ensemble
Ensemble Theatre Company has a new head honcho. Following a national search, the New Vic-based organization has appointed Scott DeVine, who brings 20 years of theater management experience to the role, as its managing director. “Scott has skillfully managed complex artistic organizations and been responsible for ensuring theaters he has served have maintained a sound […]
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Rubicon’s Twilight
Rubicon Theatre Company (RTC) officially kicks off its first full season since the pandemic shuttered its doors in February 2020 with a new production of Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 at 8 pm on Friday, April 29. That would be exactly 30 years and just shy of five hours since the not guilty verdicts were announced […]
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OOB’s ‘Tick….’
Also emerging from the pandemic for its first live theatrical production in 30 months, Out of the Box (OOB) is reviving a three-decade-old work as well, in this case tick, tick…Boom! (TTB), originally a semi-autobiographical one-man show that Jonathan Larson created in the early 1990s before his Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning Rent. Coincidentally, TTB […]
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Classical Corner
Still pivoting due to the pandemic, the Santa Barbara Symphony is squeezing in the pair of postponed performances featuring violin superstar Anne Akiko Meyers as guest soloist beginning just a week after the ensemble offered the world premiere of Concerto for Piano Four Hands and String Orchestra by composer Richard Dünser via Brahms and Schumann. […]
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Drinking Water Week
“There When You Need It,” the theme of this year’s National Drinking Water Week, is apropos for Montecito Water District — currently celebrating its 100th year of reliable water service. Drinking Water Week 2022, celebrated May 1-7, also times well with the publication of Montecito Water District’s Five-Year Strategic Plan. Developed over the past year […]
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Joe Donnelly’s SoCal is a Strange and Stirring Cornucopia
The pantheon of male American writers is a grab bag. Terkel, Mailer, Hamill, Hemingway — these tough guys and their generally hormonal prose are almost a literary brand. Plimpton — with his willowy erudition, patrician accent, and Paris Review creds — runs with another herd. Our Joe Donnelly is a third species, as evidenced by […]
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Simple, Homegrown Meals Fit for a Royal Family
“We don’t talk about Bruno tonight,” joked El Encanto General Manager Janis Clapoff on a recent warm and breezy evening. She was partially making reference to the Oscar award-winning animated film Encanto, but also referring to the hotel’s Executive Chef Bruno Lopez, who was taking the night off as head chef and serving as sous-chef […]
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Finally, Pinot: New Releases Take Tercero Wines in New Direction
“People do tell me – ‘Wait, I thought you said you’d never do pinot!’” jokes winemaker Larry Schaffer. We’re chatting inside his sleek Tercero tasting room in downtown Los Olivos. And he’s pouring me his latest release: pinot noir. Schaffer’s Tercero label has always been a bastion for imaginative, thoughtful Rhône wines. And his approach […]
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Families in Paradise: “Are we there yet?”
How can you — or your kids — not be happy when the GPS navigational voice instructs: “Make a left on Vacation Road.” Especially after that relentless, age-old question: “Are we there yet?” Even a high school friend of mine’s face lit up when I told him I was heading to San Diego’s Paradise Point. […]
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