Opera Santa Barbara sold out both performances at the Lobero of its highly entertaining show Zorro by Hector Armienta, who wrote both the music and the libretto. The action character, a sort of Spanish Robin Hood, made his debut in a 1919 novel The Curse of Capistrano by author Johnston McCulley. The action – with […]
It was a very in-tents occasion when a giant marquee covered the Hilton Hotel’s rotunda when the Santa Barbara Foundation held its 81st Persons of the Year lunch, with awards going to Jim Morouse and Peter Schuyler, whose mother Jane Schuyler won the award in 1997, making them the first mother-son duo to be so […]
What to get the man who pretty much has everything? That was the quandary faced by Montecito Bank & Trust president George Leis when, as chairman of the National YMCA, he had an audience with 87-year-old Pope Francis at the Vatican earlier this month. His Holiness was presented with a book created by Fr Joe […]
Santa Barbara Symphony wrapped its 71st season on a high note at the Granada with Mahler Meets Klezmer: Titans of Sound. The concert, conducted by veteran maestro Nir Kabaretti, featured Grammy and Juno-nominated clarinet soloist, band leader and composer David Krakauer. The entertaining musical journey started with Mozart’s Overture to The Abduction from the Seraglio, […]
Hospice of Santa Barbara has launched a Legacy of Compassion campaign to coincide with its 50th anniversary. CEO David Selberg announced the campaign, which helps with activities throughout the year, at a Shining Light Society spring reception at its Riviera headquarters, just a tiara’s toss from the Belmond El Encanto. Behavior analyst Rosy Bucio shared […]
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 & […]
Meghan Markle’s new Netflix series exhibiting her cookery and gardening skills is not being shot at the Sussex’s Riven Rock estate. But, by sheer coincidence, at the nearby eight-acre estate of old friend Tim and Sherri Cipolla, who split their time between our rarefied enclave and their home in Rancho Palos Verdes, an oceanside development […]
On a deeply personal note, I remember Glen Holden, one of three founding members of the Santa Barbara Polo Club, who has moved to more heavenly pastures at the age of 96. Born in Boise, Idaho, Glen grew up on a ranch outside of Portland, Oregon, from the age of six where he developed a […]
It was a sea of navy-blue blazers and Nantucket red pants when the Santa Barbara Yacht Club marked its 152nd opening day as the second oldest sailing mecca on the West Coast. Executive Chef Owen Hanavan laid on a heaping display of food – plank salmon, lamb chops, sausages, shrimp, eggs Benedict, eggs Florentine, and […]
Social gridlock reigned at Lee Stanton Antiques in the upper village when international British photographer Tim Street-Porter, an old friend, and artist and editor Annie Kelly promoted their new Rizzoli coffee table tome City of Dreams: Los Angeles Interiors. The 256-page book, which took two years to come together, features the designs of Frank Gehry […]
Campbell Hall at UCSB was the place to be when the popular Arts & Lectures program staged two more major entertaining concerts. The first was the Danish String Quartet, joined by Finnish cellist Johannes Rostamo, for the eagerly anticipated capstone to their Doppelgänger Project, which I have watched over the past three years at Campbell […]
Little Women, the American Theatre Guild’s musical version of Louisa May Alcott’s popular novel at the Granada, was an absolute delight. Based on Alcott’s life, the production follows the lives of sisters Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy March, each determined to lead their lives on their own terms. The timeless, captivating tale – set at […]
Another day at Maison Mineards Montecito, another TV crew! This one from Germany’s ZDF network with a five-person team, two of whom had flown in specially and one producer, Mo Davies, who jetted in from London and knew many of my royal expert friends from dealing with them over the decades. Los Angeles-based producer, Melanie […]
Banker Henry Walker is the new president of the Santa Barbara Polo Club. Henry, who I have known for many years, is the patron of the FMB Too! polo team, a club trustee and member of the USPA since 1981. He joined the 117-year-old, Long Beach-based Farmers & Merchants Bank as a teller, and now […]
On a personal note, I remember Lynda Millner, the MJ’s longtime society columnist who retired in August 2022, after 27 years as a scribe for this illustrious organ. Her Seen Around Town column was a regular must-read chronicling the comings and goings of our rarefied enclave’s bustling social scene. Octogenarian Lynda leaves her long-lived husband, […]
Real Housewives of New Jersey alumna Dina Cantin is our rarefied enclave’s latest celebrity resident. She and her husband David Cantin have just snapped up a nearly 6,000 square foot five bedroom, five-and-a-half bathroom Tuscan-style villa for $16 million in Montecito. The tony twosome relocated to the Left Coast in 2015, settling in Malibu. Originally […]
The Lehman Trilogy, a Tony Award winning three-man show by Stefano Massini, adapted by Ben Power and directed by Oanh Nguyen, at the Ensemble Theatre Company’s New Vic is not to be missed! The three-hour-long production, with two ten-minute intermissions, chronicles the rise and fall of the Lehman brothers, a 160-year journey of three immigrant […]
Mega philanthropists Roger and Sarah Chrisman hosted a fun fête for supporters and friends on the 110 ft. gaff rigged schooner Mystic Whaler, which is now run by the Central Coast Ocean Adventures Foundation based in Oxnard, as an education vessel for young people aged 10 to 18 years. The tony Montecito twosome bought the […]
Our Eden by the Beach’s Community Arts Music Association ended its 105th International Series on a particularly high note when the U.K.’s 66-year-old Academy of St. Martin in the Fields – under the directorship of legendary Grammy Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell – played a sold-out concert at the Granada. The wonderfully entertaining show featured the […]
Roger and Robin Himowitz opened the doors of their charming Provencal-style Montecito estate to host a sunset soirée honoring former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich before he spoke at UCSB’s Campbell Hall, part of the popular Arts & Lectures program. Reich, 77, who studied at Dartmouth College, Yale Law School, and won a Rhodes […]
There are now more billionaires than ever, 2,781 in all, 141 more than last year and 26 more than the record set in 2021, according to the new 38th annual Forbes magazine Rich List. They’re also richer than ever, with $14.2 trillion in aggregate, up $2 trillion from 2023 and $1.1 trillion more than the […]
To Caruso’s, the five-star Forbes Travel Guide-rated oceanside eatery at the Rosewood Miramar, named after the Los Angeles billionaire and developer Rick Caruso, to try out a new three course menu for gourmands in a hurry. Although why you’d rush given the idyllic location and culinary excellence of Chef Shibani Mone is quite beyond me. […]
After postponing their concert in February given a mandatory evacuation warning because of heavy rain, the charmingly named Grammy Award-winning octet Roomful of Teeth with pianist-guitarist Gabriel Kahane, performed in a UCSB Arts & Lectures show at the Music Academy of the West’s Hahn Hall. The tony troupe is dedicated to reimagining the expressive potential […]
Santa Barbara resident and fellow MClub member Bobbie Kinnear gave a riveting talk at the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum about her father, Col. Robert Ernest Evans, a highly decorated B-17 and B-29 pilot, who flew more than 50 combat missions over Europe and Japan in World War II. In 1943 he famously served as […]
Terry Pillow, who runs the charming leather goods boutique Homer on Coast Village Road, now knows what brown can do for him! Terry, former head honcho of Ralph Lauren, Tommy Bahama, and Coach, is headlined in an eight-page feature in WM Brown magazine, a quarterly men’s lifestyle glossy, with photos taken by Montecito’s Dewey Nicks. […]
Santa Barbara Symphony maestro Nir Kabaretti hosted a Jazz & Juice party at the Montecito aerie of Chuck and Merryl Zegar. The sunset soirée featured New York-based singer Kristen Lee Sergeant, a certified sommelier working in Manhattan’s top eateries who founded a wine label with Grammy Award winning saxophonist Ted Nash, called Two Notes, now […]
Meghan Markle is going to the dogs! The Riven Rock resident’s new lifestyle brand, American Riviera Orchard, has listed a range of items in documents sent to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which includes dog food, bath soaps and blankets. The 42-year-old Duchess of Sussex also wants to market fragrance sachets, hand soaps, bath […]
There was a great deal of sole searching going on at the Lobero when State Street Ballet performed a highly entertaining version of Cinderella, choreographed by the company’s founder Rodney Gustafson. State Street Ballet’s Cinderella at the Lobero was celebrating its 20th anniversary. The production, with its stirring music by Sergei Prokofiev, was written in […]
The phone at Maison Mineards Montecito was red hot after Kate, the Princess of Wales, posted her candid video revealing she was being treated for cancer after visiting the London Clinic for major gastro-intestinal surgery. It finally put to rest the scurrilous rumors circulating fueling endless speculation about her long absence from royal duties which […]
Montecito winemaker Gretchen Lieff was awarded Woman Business Owner of the Year at the 10th annual BRAVO Awards lunch at Goleta’s Hilton Garden Inn. Gretchen, owner of the La Lieff winery in the Funk Zone and an avid animal activist, exclaimed: “A great surprise! But a nice honor.” The event, with the theme Rising Together, […]
Santa Barbara Revels’ 16th annual Pub Sing on St. Patrick’s Day was really up the creek! More than 60 warblers, including founder Susan Keller, joined in the merry mayhem at the Creekside Restaurant & Bar in Goleta singing a selection of Irish tunes, sea shanties, familiar folk songs, traditional favorites, and novelty ditties with Andrew […]
Social gridlock reigned at the Music Academy of the West’s Hahn Hall when VIP donors got a sneak peek at this year’s 77th annual summer festival “The Magic of Music.” Featuring 150 performances with more than 137 fellows between June 12 and Aug. 3, new academy president and CEO Shauna Quill outlined the many programs […]
Just four months after moving into Casa Dorinda, artist Victoria Furst Hines has lost no time in making her mark. Victoria, who with her late husband Carter ran a popular Montecito drapery business, has displayed 36 of her colorful works in oil, acrylic and watercolor, just a tiara’s toss from the home’s capacious dining room […]
Bobbi Abram is Santa Barbara City College Foundation’s new chief executive officer, starting May 1. Abram has spent most of her career as a leader in nonprofit and higher education fundraising and administration, and has served as executive director of the Pasadena City College Foundation since 2012. “This is an exciting time to be joining […]
The stars were out in abundance in our Eden by the Beach when perpetually youthful actor Rob Lowe celebrated his 60th birthday with a host of Hollywood stars who traveled up the 101 to help the 9-1-1: Lone Star star celebrate until the early hours with a live band. “I love the milestone birthdays because […]
Kenny Lee Lewis, bassist and backup singer for the Steve Miller Band since the early 1980s, has put together a five-piece band called THE FRENZ and secured half a dozen special guest singers and musicians with decades of combined rock history for a tribute show at the iconic Fillmore West in San Francisco and its […]
A tidal wave of generosity enveloped the Santa Barbara Channelkeeper’s sold-out 22nd annual Blue Water Ball at the Cabrillo Pavilion with more than 200 guests raising around $170,000 for the popular nonprofit. The boffo bash was emceed by the ubiquitous Andrew Firestone and 14 paintings by local artists, including Kelly Claus, Benjamin Anderson, Eric Foote, […]
Oscar winning actor Kevin Costner is again lending his oceanside estate on Carpinteria’s Padaro Lane for this year’s One805Live fall concert, which last year raised around $1 million providing equipment not available in normal budgets for first responders, including mental health support. At a socially gridlocked Honorary Board cocktail reception at the Montecito Club the […]
Society gadabout Rick Oshay and La Boheme dancers founder Teresa Kuskey teamed up with Scott and Karen Davis to host an Oscars bash at Rick’s Montecito estate while the 96th annual event was shown on giant TV screens around the gardens decorated with giant figures of the awards trophy. Among those noshing on the canapés […]
The Golden Days of Hollywood were remembered when the Santa Barbara Symphony under guest conductor Constantine Kitsopoulos, general director of the New York Grand Opera, performed an Oscar-themed concert at the Granada hosted by the vivacious Leslie Zemeckis. Leslie, a bestselling author and award-winning documentarian, as well as being a near Montecito neighbor and fellow […]