The Santa Barbara Maritime Museum throbbed to the Caribbean beat as 140 guests celebrated a Love Boat cruise gala with head honcho Greg Gorga in all white officer’s uniform. Condor Express owner Hiroko Benko, who created a Santa Barbara Whale Heritage Area, and Sigrid Toye, a past board president and current board member, were presented […]
The venerable Granada was packed for a sold-out Rock for First Responders concert, organized by One805. Even Prince Harry turned out for the VIP reception. A guitar signed by HRH and the other performers, including Macy Gray, Kenny Loggins, Michael McDonald and Alan Parsons, soldfor $9,000. Toad the Wet Sprocket and Hootie & the Blowfish […]
French violinist and former Santa Barbara Symphony concert master Gilles Apap was in his element in a CAMA Masterpiece series concert with Friends! at the Lobero Theatre. Apap played a colorful selection of works with pianist Inna Faliks featuring Fauré, Krieger, Enescu, Piazzolla and Paganini, before playing Chinese and Tibetan compositions with Xiaoli Cioffi on […]
The Californian Rangeland Trust, founded in 1998, hosted the public premiere of its 49-minute documentary You Just Can’t See Them from the Road – directed by Keely Brazil Covello and Michaela Brazil Gillies, daughters of ranch veterinarians in a remote area of northern California. More than 200 people clad in Stetsons and cowboy boots poured […]
Santa Barbara residents Eric, former head of Google, and Wendy Schmidt’s family foundation has purchased the 350-acre parcel of land known as Mar y Cel, the largest contiguous undeveloped property in Montecito. In keeping with their philanthropic focus on the environment and in recognition of the value of Mar y Cel to the community and […]
Santa Barbara warbler Katy Perry’s high life is getting even higher! The former Dos Pueblos High student, 40, has announced she is heading into outer space as part of the historical Blue Origins all-woman crew alongside Amazon tycoon Jeff Bezos’s fiancée Lauren Sanchez and CBS anchor Gayle King this spring. It will be the 11th […]
State Street Ballet, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary, made quite a splash with the world premiere of its latest highly entertaining production The Little Mermaid – based on the classic 1837 fairytale of Hans Christian Andersen – at the Lobero. Choreographed by Artistic Director Megan Philips and Executive Director Cecily MacDougall the nautical adventure […]
Local longevity specialist Dr. Steven Gundry was so oversubscribed at an MClub lunch at the historic Santa Barbara Club that he had to speak twice – with 80 guests at his first performance and 75 at his second an hour later. The cardiothoracic surgeon and four times New York Times bestselling author’s ninth tome The […]
Security was paramount at the Granada when Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company performed as part of UCSB’s popular Arts & Lectures program. A small number of protesters were present, carrying disparaging placards. More than 18 Santa Barbara police officers were stationed in and outside the theater and guests had to go through metal detectors placed in […]
More than 115 guests turned out for the venerable Granada Theatre’s annual “l Love Your Theater” open house when supporters were allowed to see the “innards” of the 2,000-seat auditorium with wine and canapés on the capacious stage which a week earlier had hosted the historic London Symphony Orchestra, part of CAMA’s international program. Jon […]
Last weekend, terminally ill mother Traci Glynn from Atascadero traveled up the coast to Solvang where the historic Alisal Ranch hosted her, her husband, and son Sean, 21, for the weekend of final memories and a dream come true. A lifelong horse owner and experienced rider Traci, 42, who was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer, […]
ShelterBox president Kerri Murray went to pot when she met King Charles and Queen Camilla at Buckingham Palace last week! Kerri also met Camilla at an event at the tony twosome’s private residence Clarence House, formerly the London home of the late Queen Mother. The latest event celebrated the anniversaries of four humanitarian organizations, ShelterBox, […]
Opera Santa Barbara’s latest production of Mozart’s classic work The Marriage of Figaro turned into the Love Boat when head honcho Kostis Protopapas and director Sara E. Widzer, set the location on the ocean liner SS Seville on the Mediterranean in the 1930s. The two-hour 40-minute Lobero show, with set and projection design by Yuki […]
One805 hosted a grants reception at the Montecito Club handing out a record high of $1,003,000 in checks to First Responder agencies and the One805 Mental Wellness Fund. The chiefs of all First Responder Agencies in Santa Barbara County were present, including SBC Fire Chief Mark Hartwig, Montecito Fire Chief David Neels, and SBC Sheriff […]
Disco fever reigned supreme when the Firefighter Foundation of Santa Barbara South Coast hosted a pulsating Disco Inferno event with more than 200 guests at the Bella Vista, Summerland, estate of Pat and Ursula Nesbitt. The boffo bash, co-chaired by Ursula, Arlene Montesano, Gail Kvistad, Jim Nigro and Greg Hons, featured a performance by the […]
Hahn Hall at the Music Academy of the West was packed when artists from the visiting London Symphony Orchestra via CAMA performed with academy alumnae, including flute, clarinet and harp, with works by Mozart and Ravel in the latest performance from the Mariposa concert series… The final work, another Mozart piece, “Clarinet Quartet in A […]
International surfer Lakey Peterson is coming to the big screen in 805 Beer’s Making Waves documenting her rise to fame and focus on mental wellness, including how narrowly missing the Olympic roster became her catalyst for deeper discovery. “You don’t remember the wins or the losses,” she reflects. You remember the in-between moments – being […]
The audience for Santa Barbara Symphony’s latest concert at the venerable Granada was certainly ore-struck! The musicians – under Grammy-winning guest conductor Lucas Richman, music director of the Bangor Symphony, and backed by a giant movie screen – played the score from Charlie Chaplin’s 1925 film The Gold Rush, whose story was based on the […]
It was quite a week for the local charity Hearts Aligned which helps critically ill children and their families. The nonprofit threw its third annual Hearts to Hearts Valentine’s lunch emceed by radio host Catherine Remak at the Ritz-Carlton Bacara for 250 guests raising an impressive $200,000 for the cause. Just 48 hours later Catherine […]
Howard Jay Smith has just published his latest musical work Viva Violetta & Verdi following two years of diligent research and 18 months of writing. Howard’s research also included many interviews with the late local Metropolitan Opera tenor Eduardo Villa, who shared a lifetime of working in opera and performed 18 of Verdi’s operas in […]
Social gridlock reigned at vintner and animal activist Gretchen Lieff’s La Lieff tasting room in the Funk Zone when she hosted a Hearts & Rosé bash for 100 guests on Valentine’s Day. Singer Nicole Sophia entertained on guitar while DJ Joseph Souza provided a throbbing musical background. There was also a photo booth for amorous […]
Twyla Tharp Dance’s Diamond Jubilee – the New York company’s first visit back to our Eden by the Beach in ten years – took place at the Granada with live music from the Third Coast Percussion, and was a true tour de force. The energized performance, part of the popular UCSB Arts & Lectures program, […]
The Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara honored 20 student artists during a presentation and reception at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s Mary Craig Auditorium. Each will receive a scholarship and their selected art submissions are currently being exhibited through this week. Now in its 46th year, the program continues to attract exceptionally talented student […]
Mike Edmondson, U.S. Marine Corps veteran and Vice President of performance optimization at Amgen, has joined the advisory council of Dream Foundation’s Dreams for Veterans program. Edmondson is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate and served in the U.S. Marine Corps for six years. He has since worked in the pharmaceutical industry for 25 years, including […]
My congratulations to Montecito film director Frederick Toye, 57, who has just received two of the movie industry’s highest awards at the 77th annual Directors Guild of America Awards at the Beverly Hilton. Frederick, whose mother is screenwriter (and MJ contributor) Sigrid Toye, received the Outstanding Directorial Achievements in a Dramatic Series Award and an […]
The Ensemble Theatre Company’s presentation of a vastly entertaining new version of the Bard’s Hamlet, one of his best-known tragedies at the New Vic directed by Margaret Shigeko Starbuck, is not to be missed. The production is set in modern Denmark with Will Block playing the troubled titular character – with the Shakespearean text of […]
It was definitely a 90-minute production with a difference when Cirque Kalabanté performed at the Lobero, part of the popular UCSB Arts & Lectures series. The show, Afrique en Cirque, was created by Yamoussa Bangoura, a multidisciplinary artist of Guinean origin, who eventually joined his country’s Circus Baobab touring Africa and Europe. In early 2000 […]
Former ballerina and photographer Jenna Reichental hosted a Palm Royale-themed belated birthday bash thrown by her husband Avi at their Toro Canyon Jenavi Vineyards for 80 guests. Oozing chic and elegance befitting a Palm Beach, Florida crowd, the boffo bash drew on the Apple+ TV series, starring Montecito comedienne Carol Burnett and high society in […]
Santa Barbara Maritime Museum, which celebrates its 25th anniversary next month, opened its first exhibition of the year – Above Your Dreams by local artist Kevin A. Short, which runs through May 11. The colorful exhibit of more than 40 oil paintings showcases Short’s deftness at capturing fleeting beauty and the power of sunlight through […]
On a personal note, I remember Karim Aga Khan, who just died at his estate in Portugal at the age of 88. The vastly rich religious head of the Ismaili sect of Islam, which has as many as 15 million members, he inherited his title from his grandfather in 1957, aged just 20, and was […]
What excellent timing! The Belmond El Encanto just launched a cinematic speaker series which happily coincided with the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. The series featured Ojai-based scriptwriter and producer Stephen Cornwell, son of prolific spy novelist David Cornwell, who used the pseudonym John le Carré when he wrote such bestsellers as The Spy Who […]
President Trump’s revelation to the New York Post that he would not deport Prince Harry if he was found to have fudged his visa application re: his drug use. Having admitted in his bestselling autobiography Spare that he partook in cannabis and psychedelic mushrooms could not have come at a better time for the Duke […]
It was an evening of many facets at the Music Academy of the West when it hosted a Denk, Denim and Diamonds gala which attracted more than 100 guests and raised around $50,000 for the Miraflores oceanside campus. Drinks on the terrace outside Lehmann Hall kicked off the sunset soirée before supporters filed into the […]
It was all too heavenly for words when Dean Wilson, head honcho of the Turner Foundation, celebrated his half century at Valinor, the former St. Mary’s Seminary which sold for $7.618 million in December 2022, and is now a 35.69-acre retreat center, a tiara’s toss from the Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens. More than 140 guests […]
After a decade of producing Super Bowl touchdowns and fumbles, David Bolton, Executive Director and CEO of the California Mission Foundation will be watching the big game in New Orleans between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles in the comfort of his Santa Barbara home. David tells me Fox Latin America Mexico, sold […]
It was the perfect combination when the 30-year-old Boston Brass and three-time Grammy-nominated Imani Winds performed at the Music Academy of the West’s Hahn Hall, part of the popular UCSB Arts & Lecture series. Adventurous programming and dynamic playing is the wind quintet’s trademark; playing Paquito D’Rivera’s “Selections from Aires Tropicales” and even Stevie Wonder […]
The Golden Age of Baroque was on full display at the Lobero when Britain’s Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and soprano Julia Bullock performed as part of UCSB’s popular Arts & Lectures program. With works by Handel, Vivaldi, Bach, Purcell, Pachelbel, Strozzi, Telemann, Lully, and Rameau, there was something for everybody with the musicians, […]
At Hahn Hall at the Music Academy of the West was brimming for another UCSB Arts & Lectures concert when international Russian pianist Alexander Malofeev showed off his tremendous keyboard talent with works by Schubert, Kabalevsky, Janáček, Liszt, and Scriabin. Now Berlin-based, Malofeev came to international prominence in 2014 when he won the International Tchaikovsky […]
Faherty Montecito, the eclectic clothing store on Coast Village Road that opened in December, is accentuating the negative. It has launched its first photographic exhibition displaying works by local lensman Paul Greene, with 15 of his shots dotted around the shop’s two floors showing keen surfer Greene’s love of the ocean with impressive black and […]
The Cabrillo Pavilion was socially gridlocked for the second annual Shine on Santa Barbara breakfast supporting Our Lady of Grace Senior High School in Mamponteng, Ghana. Hosted by Rise & Shine in collaboration with local philanthropists Mary Lynn and Warren Staley, the bash highlighted the transformative power of education and OLAG’s impact on Ghanaian youth. […]