Santa Barbara’s ABC affiliate KEYT-TV has a new morning news anchor, Joey Vergilis, I can exclusively reveal. Vergilis, a graduate of Cal State Northridge with a degree in broadcast journalism, will be co-anchor on the am and midday newscasts withAlys Martinez. Most recently he worked for Bally Sports West including sideline reporting, hosting a weekly […]
World renowned trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, bandleader and composer, who I’ve seen many times on the Granada stage courtesy of UCSB Arts & Lectures, was back at the historic venue after a tour of Asia with the Wynton Marsalis Septet. Marsalis, 61, artistic director of Jazz at the Lincoln Center and director of Jazz Studies at […]
Santa Barbara’s Rescue Mission hosted its annual Easter Feast and for the 16th year, where I offered my volunteer services as more than 300 needy homeless tucked into a chicken, ham, and macaroni and cheese dinner. David Fletcher, head of food service, cooked 160 pounds of ham, 160 pounds of chicken, 100 pounds of potatoes, […]
Guille Gil-Reynoso, an area communications professional and women’s empowerment advocate, has joined the board of directors of the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara. Born in Mexico, Gil-Reynoso earned a bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, before working as a landscape architectural designer in San Diego and George W. Girvin Associates […]
Japan’s primary broadcaster NHK spotlighted Opera Santa Barbara in an extensive news segment on its Lobero Theatre production An American Dream on the treatment of legal American residents of Japanese heritage after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Tokyo TV crew was in our Eden by the Beach for several days during the filming. Clearly […]
Forbes magazine has just released its 37th annual World’s Billionaires list, with 2,640 billionaires worth a total of $12.2 trillion ranked, down by $500 billion last year. At Number One is Frenchman Bernard Arnault, 74, the owner of Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, and Tiffany for the first time with $211 billion, while Tesla magnate Elon […]
Ensemble Theatre Company’s latest production The Children at the New Vic confronts the three-member cast with a stunning moral dilemma regarding the older and newer generations and environmental accountability. After a tsunami wreaks havoc on a nuclear reactor in rural England, a married couple’s lives are further disrupted by the mysterious appearance of a long-lost […]
One805, the local nonprofit dedicated to supporting First Responders across Santa Barbara County, didn’t have to look very far for a headliner for its flagship gala event on September 22 at the oceanside Summerland estate of Oscar winning actor Kevin Costner and his wife Christine. At a socially gridlocked reception for more than 100 guests […]
It was a double anniversary celebration when the Santa Barbara Choral Society hosted a 75th anniversary gala at the Music Academy’s Lehmann Hall, which also marked the 30th season of its veteran conductor JoAnne Wasserman. Before repairing to the Duo Catering dinner, guests were at Hahn Hall, just a tiara’s toss away, for a highly […]
Social gridlock reigned when dynamic duo Ralph and Diane Waterhouse opened their first art gallery on Coast Village Road, formerly the site of the Scoops ice cream store. The Waterhouse Gallery is an extension of their nearly four decades old La Arcada emporium in Santa Barbara, next door to the popular French eatery Petit Valentien. […]
The audience at the Lobero was transported back to the Swinging ‘60s when Los Angeles-based tribute band The Magical Music of Motown returned to the historic venue after appearing in our Eden by the Beach last May. The vibrant and colorful two-hour show paid homage to the legendary Detroit-based record label. Founded by now 93-year-old […]
Montecito doctor Joe Purpura has published his first book Code Crisis, a fast-paced thriller about a lonely gynecologist who risks everything for love and his country. “I love the thriller genre and for years had been bouncing around the idea of writing a novel about a physician as a reluctant hero who gets dragged into […]
Santa Barbara Symphony, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary, hosted its fifth Concert Apéritif soirée, The Art of Brass: From Baroque to Hollywood, at Seaside Gardens, a four-acre botanical wonderland in Carpinteria owned by Fred and Linda Wudl. For the occasion five members of the symphony – trumpeters Jon Lewis and Dustin McKinney, trombonist Dillon […]
Granada Theatre benefactors Roger and Sarah Chrisman hosted the first of a three-part series, Onstage at the G, with 85 guests dining at the cavernous locale with scrumptious food from the Catering Connection. Previously the theater hosted Upstairs at the G in the McCune Founder Room, but the capacity was limited to 40, with the […]
CAMA Women’s Board threw its second annual Sunset by the Sea at the Cabrillo Pavilion, where London-based luthier and co-founder of The Open String, Robert Brewer Young, 56, talked about the famed 17th century Italian violin and cello maker Stradivarius, whose instruments have sold for millions of dollars. Young, who received traditional French training in […]
Just 96 hours after St. Patrick’s Day at Dargan’s, the popular Ortega Street Irish pub was bustling for the Santa Barbara Revels 15th annual Vernal Equinox pub singalong with guitarist Josh Jenkins and the group’s song leader, flutist Erin McKibben. The only thing “Dublin” more than Ireland’s capital city was the volume of rain that […]
Award-winning actor Max McLean, 69, was a true tour de force performing the Chronicles of Narnia author C.S. Lewis in an entertaining one-man show at the Granada. McLean is known for his adaptations of books by the Irish author who died in 1963 at the age of 64. C.S. Lewis is memorialized in Poet’s Corner […]
Opera Santa Barbara’s latest production The Light in the Piazza at Center Stage Theater, this year’s annual showcase of the Chrisman Studio Artist Program, was an absolute gem. With music and lyrics by Adam Guettel and a book by Craig Lucas, the show was based on the 1960 novella by Elizabeth Spencer and the 1963 […]
Montecito actress Gwyneth Paltrow, 50, is used to being in the limelight, but her current appearance in a Utah courtroom – where she is being sued for $300,000 over a 2016 ski crash on the slopes of the Deer Valley Resort in Park City – must be quite a new experience. Retired Soda Springs optometrist […]
A visit to Lotusland—the 37-acre Montecito botanical garden—to co-chair the launch lunch of a new coffee table tome with philanthropist Anne Towbes last year, has led to Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning British actress Jane Seymour designing a scarf to mark the 30th anniversary of Polish opera singer Ganna Walska’s estate as a public garden. […]
Hollywood musical giant John Williams, 91, who was featured in last week’s Oscars coverage, was celebrated in grand style by the Santa Barbara Symphony under Fresno Symphony guest conductor Rei Hotoda at the Granada. The hugely entertaining performance, dubbed John Williams: A Symphonic Celebration, included music from most of his major hits, including Jaws, E.T., […]
CADA’s 12th annual Gratitude lunch at the Hilton attracted 170 guests and raised around $50,000 for the charity’s mentor program which helps third to eighth grade youngsters. Unfortunately Anne Towbes, lunch founder and chair, was unable to make the event in the Reagan Room, but K-LITE radio host, Catherine Remak, who is also the organization’s […]
To the Hilton Garden Inn where the Santa Barbara chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners hosted its annual BRAVO Awards lunch celebrating eight women as community, industry, and business leaders. This year’s 109-guest ceremony, titled “Dream Big, Power On,” was the largest since the awards launched nine years ago, and was created […]
Social gridlock reigned when society gadabout Rick Oshay took over the Fieldside restaurant at the Santa Barbara Polo & Racquet Club to celebrate the 13th anniversary of his half century. Fifty guests descended on the clubhouse locale to nosh on a five-course dinner after beluga caviar canapés and champagne and then dancing the night away […]
Montecito Bank & Trust’s 31st annual Anniversary Grants reception, originally scheduled for the courtyard of the Santa Barbara Historical Museum, had to be changed at the last minute to the bank’s imposing State Street headquarters because of the heavy rains. More than 100 guests turned out for the popular fête celebrating the bank’s 48th anniversary, […]
Montecito rocker Kenny Loggins is on the road to retirement. The iconic guitarist and Grammy-winning singer-songwriter is playing just 18 concerts on his upcoming “This Is It” farewell tour, and then that’s really it! “I just had my 75th birthday and I feel like it’s time,” Kenny told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. His tour, which started […]
Santa Barbara Zoo has added four new members to its board of directors – Yvette Birch Giller, Angela Sanchez, Bradley Vernon, and Karen Wintringham. Giller is president of the Mosher Foundation, which supports nonprofit organizations in our Eden by the Beach within the areas of education, healthcare and the performing arts. She has also served […]
Montecito actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus was honored by President Joe Biden in a star-studded ceremony at the White House to present the 2021 National Humanities Medals and the 2021 National Medals of Art. In total, 24 artists, authors, and humanitarians, including rocker Bruce Springsteen, singers Gladys Knight and José Feliciano, fashion designer Vera Wang, and authors […]
While former TV talk-show titan Oprah Winfrey has been reducing her waistline as a spokeswoman for Weight Watchers, now rebranded WW, she has been expanding her property empire. The longtime Montecito resident, 69, now owns nearly 1,000 acres of land on the Hawaiian island of Maui, I learn. She has splashed out $6.6 million on […]
Lotusland, the 37-acre botanical paradise just a tiara’s toss from Westmont College, goes from strength to strength even though visitor numbers to the former estate of Polish opera legend Ganna Walska are limited to 20,000 visitors annually, including 5,000 guests for educational programs. Treasurer Stephen Schaible told the annual meeting held in the charming Theatre […]
It was the perfect blend of beer and botanicals when the 99-year-old Santa Barbara Botanic Garden hosted its 13th annual beer event, with the region’s highest-rated breweries pouring one-of-a-kind beers inspired by the 78-acre Mission Canyon Garden, which contains 1,000 specimens of rare and indigenous plants. The fun floral fête, co-chaired by Jonathan DiBenedetto and […]
Still in sprightly form at 91, legendary and pre-eminent pedagogue, Manhattan-based pianist Jerome Lowenthal, who has taught at the Music Academy for more than half a century, was honored at the Miraflores campus’s Hahn Hall with a “Lowenthal’s Legend” concert featuring his daughter Carmel Lowenthal, Grammy nominee Ursula Oppens, Vassily Primakov, Grammy Award-winner Nadia Shpachenko, […]
It was certainly a plucky performance when the Grammy award-winning Attacca Quartet, a decidedly funky and exuberant foursome, played at the Music Academy’s Hahn Hall, as part of the popular UCSB Arts & Lectures series. The works, all by Pulitzer Prize- and Grammy-winning composer Caroline Shaw, known for “a world of sound never heard before,” […]
After a three-year enforced hiatus caused by the COVID pandemic, the 75th annual Santa Barbara International Orchid Show, with 500 colorful exhibitors, kicked off at the Earl Warren Showgrounds. The three-day event “Orchids: The Adventure Returns,” is one of the oldest, largest, and most prestigious shows in the U.S. with glorious displays installed by local, […]
Santa Barbara’s State Street Ballet is off to Japan for a two-week tour, including Tokyo and Osaka, in May. Founder and co-artistic director Rodney Gustafson tells me the tony troupe of 19 dancers, accompanied by five staffers, will be performing Jungle Book, which is being danced again on April 29 at the Lobero, and two […]
The cultural treasures of Japan also beckon for members of Montecito Bank & Trust’s MClub, a concierge travel club for premier customers. Thirty members gathered at the University Club for a talk with Hiroko Benko, bubbly owner of the Condor Express whale-watching vessel, whose relative is the country’s 13th Grand Tea Master, and club director […]
Scott Reed, who has served as president and CEO of Montecito’s Music Academy for 14 years, is stepping down next summer, I can exclusively reveal. The fourth president in the historic organization’s history, Scott, a UCSB graduate, has worked with the oceanside Miraflores campus for nearly 25 years, starting as an unpaid intern. He took […]
State Street Ballet’s performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Granada was an enchanting show full of mishaps and mayhem. The William Shakespeare work, with rollicking music written in 1843 by Felix Mendelssohn – he composed the overture when just 17 – and inventive choreography by company founder Rodney Gustafson, transcended the two worlds […]
Ruckus, a sextet of talented period instrumentalists, were going for baroque at the Music Academy’s Hahn Hall when they played an all-Bach concert with flutist Emi Ferguson for Camerata Pacifica. Exhibiting an extraordinary display of period instruments including theorbo, baroque guitar and bassoon, viola da gamba, and harpsichord, the musicians, led by founder Clay Zeller-Townson […]
It was certainly a family affair when Los Romeros, a guitar quartet featuring family members – Celin, Pepe, Angel, and Lito Romero – performed at the Lobero, part of the CAMA Masterseries. The family was celebrating its 60th anniversary and the historic theater its 150th birthday. The dynasty settled in Santa Barbara after legendary Spanish […]