As anyone knows who’s seen Storm Large subbing in with Pink Martini in the Portland band’s frequent visits to Santa Barbara, there’s not a lot of guile when the slyly sultry and self-possessed singer takes the stage – or does interviews. That’s been true no matter who’s she talking to or whether she’s singing punk-flavored […]
Modern proponents of the Great American Songbook don’t come much bigger than Michael Feinstein. Since the mid-1980s, the multi-platinum-selling, five-time Grammy-nominated, Tony-winning recording artist and performer has received national acclaim and adulation since launching a career as a cabaret singer-pianist devoted to the loosely defined collection of American popular songs, show tunes and jazz standards […]
Peter Muller, the hedge fund founder whose other passion of making music often outweighs his day job, is coming back to SOhO to play a benefit concert on March 27 that will also serve as a preview to a few new compositions. The show will feature an extended version of his longtime band The Kindred […]
Just over a dozen years ago, the Sonrise Baby Home in Uganda was started by a young woman named Damali Mirembe. She was one of many orphans raised by an American Vietnam War veteran on disability who had, years ago, moved to Uganda to help the orphaned children there. When they grew he put them […]
Chuck Madson knows a lot about the possible consequences of believing that your opportunities are limited. A Central Coast native, he spent more than a decade as an incarcerated convict, half of those before he turned 20, the result of both substance abuse and a challenging childhood. But Madson turned his life around after he […]
Eddie Ellner didn’t realize he was building what would become a local institution when – 20 years ago – he had the idea to create his own yoga studio just off State Street and a few blocks from the beach. But he knew that yoga would be the foundation. He’d discovered the practice years before […]
Two years ago, just before his previous concert at the Lobero Theatre, the great jazz saxophonist-composer Charles Lloyd was mourning the loss of his sax colleague Wayne Shorter, who had passed away the night before. When we spoke last weekend, the Montecito musician – the home he has long shared with his photographer wife Dorothy […]
When the world premiere of Parents in Chains, which features three largely different casts over the course of its March 12-30 run at Ensemble Theatre Company’s New Vic Theatre, launches its second week on March 18, veteran actor Joshua Malina will be making his Santa Barbara theatrical debut. Malina’s list of credits runs for pages […]
As he shared from the Granada stage last Saturday night, it turns One805’s Rock for First Responders benefit concert grew out of Glenn Phillips’s idea to put something together in the wake of the Los Angeles fires to support both local and L.A. first responder fires, as well as the nonprofit Music Cares that helps […]
Jodi House chose this issue to be the focus of this week’s Giving List column because March is National Brain Injury Awareness Month. The nonprofit, which has been around for more than 40 years, has launched its first-ever weeklong Brain Injury Awareness campaign. The effort includes developing video content around the voices of the organization’s […]
Hurricane Hilary heading up the coast to California when his own teenage daughter and several of her friends were due to drive back from a weekend in San Francisco was the impetus for prolific writer Jay Martel to create his latest play. But Parents in Chains – which has its official world premiere at Ensemble […]
Ain’t Too Proud – The Life and Times of The Temptations, which chronicles the Motown hitmakers’ journey from the streets of Detroit to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame through songs, played for nearly three years on Broadway and was nominated for 12 Tony Awards in 2019, winning for Best Choreography. A thrilling story […]
CJ Camerieri has done pretty well for himself since spending a single summer as a trumpet fellow at the Music Academy of the West in 2002. The Juilliard grad who also plays French horn, arranges, produces and composes, not only co-founded the contemporary classical ensemble yMusic in 2008, but is perhaps even better known as […]
For the past three years, the nonprofit One805 has staged a big boisterous benefit bash in late summer at Kevin Costner’s surfside Summerland spread to raise a big percentage of its funds. The money is earmarked for all the first responder organizations throughout Santa Barbara County to help with equipment, mental health services and more. […]
Fervent folkies Gillian Welch and her musical and life partner David Rawlings were frequent visitors to the Lobero Theatre back when the singer-songwriter series Sings Like Hell was still a thing – the duo began making their astonishing moving records right around when SLH was hitting its stride in the late 1990s. But we haven’t […]
There was no doubt that top staff at the nonprofit YouthWell would show up at the sold-out Arlington Theatre last week to hear social psychologist Jonathan Haidt talk about The Anxious Generation, his new book that examines why, after more than a decade of stability and improvement, the mental health of adolescents plunged in the […]
Stop, hey, what’s that sound? Oh wait, there aren’t any. Save maybe for the gentle whoosh of air going in and out of your lungs, or the chirping of birds in the trees, everything is pretty much quiet. Hopefully, your mind, too. The outer silence is what allows us to come to inner quiet, a […]
Ariel arises anew in State Street Ballet’s world premiere original adaptation of The Little Mermaid, the 1837 Hans Christian Andersen story that became a beloved animated Disney movie 150 years later. The production – bursting with colorful characters and sets, including a number of puppets and a cast of 45 – comes from co-choreographers Cecily […]
Playwright Ken Ludwig’s first produced work, 1986’s Lend Me a Tenor, won two Tony Awards and was called “one of the classic comedies of the 20th century” by The Washington Post. Six years later, his Crazy for You ran on Broadway for five years, on London’s West End for three, taking home both Tony and […]
Sisters, the new play from Santa Barbara author Claudia McGarry, debuted last year for a short weekend run. Now the piece – which offers a peek into the difficult energy that often permeates a sibling relationship – is returning for a single performance at Unity of Santa Barbara on March 2. The sisters have had […]
Sanctuary City, by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Martyna Majok, makes its Central Coast debut in what could scarcely be a more timely moment. The powerful coming-of-age story is set in Newark in 2001, shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but it could easily be taking place in any city right now. In the coming-of-age story, two […]
A throng of actors, writers, directors, producers and other folks will stroll up to the stage to receive an Oscar on Sunday night at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. A large percentage of these will almost assuredly have spoken directly to us about their films on stage just a few weeks earlier at the Arlington […]
Romantic comedies are notorious for generally lacking depth or containing many thought-provoking moments, lest they get in the way of the jokes and romance. In Constellations, on the other hand, audiences are not only entertained but also challenged to consider the continuum of free will versus fate, and our perceptions of time, place and much […]
A park ranger and her trainee find blood in the snow outside a trailer. There’s an open door, but no people. Where they went, what happened and how to figure it all out as an impending winter storm arrives is the story of a new play called Strange Birds that centers on five strong, smart […]
Maybe the best remedy for SBIFF withdrawal symptoms is to dive right back into the movies, perhaps particularly ones that are up for Academy Awards. Many of the nominated features can be seen at cinemas around town, but unless you’re an Academy member, chances are you haven’t viewed the vast majority of short films up […]
Russ Tamblyn, who was nominated for an Oscar for portraying Norman Page in the movie Peyton Place before playing Riff in West Side Story, has just published a memoir called Dancing on the Edge: A Journey of Living, Loving, and Tumbling Through Hollywood. Tamblyn, who grew up as a dancer and tumbling gymnast before hitting […]
Dive into a unique Reiki-infused sound bath with guided hypnosis in Yoga Soup’s ongoing Sunday Soundscape series every third Sunday of the month (February 16; $35). The 75-minute journey with Danielle Elese focuses on harmonizing our internal waters, the element that comprises most of our bodies. Sound has a profound impact on water, affecting its […]
Last Sunday night, actor Clarence Maclin spoke to a sold-out Arlington Theatre audience at SBIFF’s Virtuosos Awards about why he had spent years co-writing and then acting in Sing Sing, the feature film up for Best Picture at next month’s Academy Awards. The movie depicts his earlier life, when he was sentenced to 17 years […]
The London Symphony Orchestra’s initial partnership with the Music Academy of the West officially came to its pandemic-paused close a couple of summers ago. But the relationship between the two classical music institutions continues with a three-event, two-day residency starting on February 17. President’s Day kicks off at 1 pm with a violin master class […]
Although there are only three days left in SBIFF 40, much remains to be seen. That includes a third screening on February 14 of The New Yorker Theater: The Talbots’ Legacy. This 26-minute short is about the movie theater founded by the couple – a theater that not only became one of the most influential […]
Eighteen months ago, White Buffalo Land Trust (WBLT) celebrated the culmination of its year-long pilot of the organization’s Artist in Residence program. The program represents the dipping of a toe into expressing – through fine art – the Trust’s work to restore the ecosystem by practicing, promoting, and developing systems of regenerative agriculture at Jalama […]
The wait is over. SBIFF 40 is here, with a full day already in the rearview mirror. The festival covers a lot of ground with its impressive slate of awards and panels, and screenings of almost 200 films domestic and foreign, documentary and fiction, shorts and full-length features, animation and live action. What follows is […]
Surprisingly, SBIFF isn’t the only major festival in town this week, as Santa Barbara once again hosts the annual festival of festivals, aka FestForums. The three-day conference, now at the Mar Monte Hotel, brings together festival producers, organizers and industry leaders to network, collaborate, and pick up tips about events in a single location February […]
Shakespeare is hot in the Santa Barbara region: Hot on the heels of Rubicon Theatre presenting The Acting Company’s reinterpreted version of A Comedy of Errors, both Ensemble Theatre Company and PCPA are readying new productions of classics by the Bard. L.A. theater veteran Margaret Shigeko Starbuck is directing her own reimagined adaptation of Hamlet, […]
Tales from the Tavern – the Santa Ynez singer-songwriter series that has now outlasted the late, lamented Lobero trend-setter Sings Like Hell by almost seven years – has announced its schedule for spring, which begins February 12 with Steve Poltz, who, ironically, played Hell in the last series in 2018. All of the other series […]
For a nonprofit whose main asset is a modest seven-acre farm in Summerland known as Sweet Wheel Farms, the Santa Barbara Agriculture and Farm Education Foundation (SBAFE) has a rather large and lofty goal. Namely, to upend our “modern” food systems and reconnect people to the understanding that our food comes from the land, and […]
The glittery path from Hollywood to Santa Barbara for the annual Santa Barbara International Film Festival got covered with ashes earlier this month from the devastating Los Angeles area wildfires that are still wreaking havoc on the greater community. The concept of rolling out the red carpet might have lost some of its luster, with […]
April Amante hasn’t had a whole lot of opportunities to sing in Santa Barbara since earning her Doctor of Musical Arts at UCSB in June 2023. There was the concert in May 2024, where the soprano returned to campus for the UCSB Opera Gala, directed by her mentor Isabel Bayrakdarian, the soprano who heads the […]
SOhO serves as host of a celebration of life and musical tribute to Gary Fruin, the longtime K-LITE Morning Show co-host who passed away in January. The event, at 1 pm on February 2, is an opportunity for listeners, fans, community members and all those whose lives were brightened by Fruin to remember and celebrate […]
Dr. John Philip Newell is considered one of the world’s foremost authorities on Celtic spirituality, a self-described “wandering teacher” who follows the ancient path of many lone teachers before him in the Celtic world, seeking the well-being of the world. Newell’s teaching is known for combining the head and the heart, the intellectual and the […]