The days are at the longest and the Summer Solstice Parade is coming back at full force and with a new Santa Barbara Street route. This upcoming weekend promises to be full of costumed revelry and to live up to this year’s theme: Shine. The Solstice crew is also seeking some last-minute volunteers to help […]
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The USCB Media Arts and Technology (MAT) Department held their End of the Year Show (EoYS) at the Santa Barbara Center for Art, Science, and Technology (SBCAST) for June’s 1st Thursday. The MAT Department is a “transdisciplinary graduate program that fuses emergent media, computer science, engineering, electronic music and digital art research, practice, production, and […]
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Ready to take action against gun violence? Join Santa Barbara’s chapter of Moms Demand Action in their fight to keep our community safe. All are invited to attend a meeting and join the movement this Monday, June 27, from 6-7 pm at Oak Park in Santa Barbara. Following the horrific shooting in Uvalde, people across […]
Lea másWhile the world was going to hell in a handbasket, I escaped to Rancho Santa Fe, a sort of Montecito for the horsey set, for a couple of glorious nights at lovely Rancho Valencia Resort & Spa, a Spanish-Colonial hacienda style resort set on 45 acres in north San Diego County that’s a three-and-a-half-hour drive […]
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Work by four enormously influential Southern California artists and art professors, Ken Jewesson, Ciel Bergman, Irma Cavat, and Florence “FiFi” Russell, will appear in three exhibitions July 7 to August 6 in the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art with a free, public opening reception at the museum on Thursday, July 7, from 4 to 6 […]
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Westmont senior Sibongakonkhe (“Sibo”) Msibi joins an elite group of 20 Fellows this summer at the Vocal Institute at the Music Academy in Santa Barbara. The first Westmont student to achieve this honor, he aspires to become “one of the best opera singers out there.” Chosen from an international pool of talented applicants who seek […]
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The quest for the right way to live, the right way to be, and the search for a satisfying and happy life has spanned millennia; just ask Socrates. Between 1663 and 1820 in the United States, besides being a stimulus for emigration from the “old world,” this quest led to the establishment of over 32 […]
Lea másElectric cars are gushing onto our streets from Tesla, and from Nissan, GM, Ford, Volkswagen, and a half dozen other car manufacturers (450 different models globally!). Elon Musk succeeded beyond Detroit’s wildest dreams in convincing first the American public, and then the global marketplace, that driving an electric car was “cool.” Everyone wanted one, and […]
Lea másMany of the titles of Ernest Hemingway’s best-known novels are derived from earlier literature. The Sun Also Rises comes from the Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes, (one of the most pessimistic parts of the Bible, which begins by saying that “Everything is meaningless”). For Whom the Bell Tolls comes from a sermon by the English […]
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Cultural gridlock reigned at the Santa Barbara Club when UCSB Arts & Lectures held its new 63rd season reveal party with 150 guests. “It has all been very challenging,” said Miller McCune Executive Director Celesta Billeci. “There have been many unknown hurdles during the pandemic. But we are now standing on the other side. We […]
Lea más“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.” Shakespeare employed that now famous line in his play Romeo and Juliet to imply that the naming of things is irrelevant. The Riviera Ridge School might beg to differ. The highly-esteemed independent educational institution that serves […]
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It couldn’t have been a more purr-fect evening when ASAP, the Animal Shelter Assistance Program, hosted its eighth annual Basil’s Big Bash at the Hilton, with 274 guests helping raise around $100,000 for the 33-year-old feline charity that provides shelter, veterinary care, and adoption facilities for cats in need. The beachside hostelry’s Plaza del Sol […]
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The Fund for Santa Barbara handed out checks totaling $330,000 at a Spring Community Awards celebration at the Cabrillo Pavilion. Since its founding 42 years ago, the organization has given away more than $8.5 million to worthy recipients, says Marcos Vargas, executive director. The fund’s major annual money raising event, held since 1994, is its […]
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Opera Santa Barbara ended its season in grand style with a lavish production of Verdi’s 1853 classic La Traviata at the Granada, last performed in our Eden by the Beach 11 years ago. Soprano Anya Matanovic was superb as the titular Fallen Woman with her beloved played rousingly by tenor Nathan Granner in the three-act […]
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Ensemble Theatre Company has concluded its 42nd season at the New Vic with an absolute cracker! Anthony Shaffer’s Tony Award-winning 1970 play Sleuth, directed by Jenny Sullivan, staged on a magnificent baronial set, is an absolute old-fashioned delight with two perfectly chosen British actors, Daniel Gerroll and Matthew Floyd Miller as the principal characters of […]
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Santa Barbara rock legend Alan Parsons, who received an OBE – Order of the British Empire – in last year’s annual Queen Elizabeth Birthday Honors List, has been presented with his gong at long last after 12 months of pandemic delays. Alan, 73, tells me he received the honor from Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, […]
Lea másSaturday Dear Diary, This pandemic was so inconvenient, and awful, just awful. I’ve never felt so lonely and depressed in my entire life. Thank you for helping me get through the pandemic! I’ve kept sane with tantalizing home cooked meals and entertaining TV series like Pam and Tommy. Last night I finished the last episode […]
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Conductor Donato Cabrera and Music Academy of the West (MAW) vocal pianist John Churchwell met in 2003, the first of two summers Donato spent at MAW as assistant conductor for the annual opera. The two, who live near each other in the Bay Area, became fast friends and visit each other frequently. In fact, Cabrera […]
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The Martin Luther King, Jr. Santa Barbara Committee (MLKSB) presents its all-new virtual celebratory program during this Juneteenth weekend, June 17 through June 20. This year’s theme is based on Dr. King’s words from Birmingham, Alabama on April 14, 1963: “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of […]
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The Marjorie Luke Theatre is proud to present The ShapeShifters band collective as they celebrate Solstice at The Marjorie Luke Theatre on June 25th beginning at 7 pm, located at 721 East Cota Street. The evening will feature a two-set concert composed of Santa Barbara’s premier musicians and vocalists accompanied by a courtyard celebration with […]
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