Legends Slay on Stage

UCSB Arts & Lectures packed the Arlington Theatre on two consecutive nights with jazz legend Herbie Hancock and a very different performance with drag queen RuPaul, who was promoting his new memoir The House of Hidden Meanings.

Before 14 Grammy-Award-winner Hancock’s energized show with his extraordinarily talented quintet, a dinner was thrown at Villa & Vine across from the theater, with guests including Margo Cohen-Feinberg, Lucy Lu, Linda Hedgepeth, Charles Newman, and Celesta Billeci.

Since 2012 Hancock, 84, who played with the Miles Davis Quintet during his five-decades-long career, has been a professor at UCLA, serving at the Herb Alpert School of Music.

His knack of combining jazz with funk and rock was certainly on show!

Just 24 hours later the Queen of Manhattan RuPaul, 63, winner of 14 primetime Emmys and a Tony Award, talked about his early years in San Diego and the start of his popular series RuPaul’s Drag Race, which began in 2009 and is now aired globally in the U.K. and Canada.

It’s quite amazing what makeup, wigs and outrageous attire can do!