REACH is a small local organization that provides comprehensive transformative support and development opportunities to first-generation college-bound students as they navigate the transition from high school to postsecondary education. The name is an acronym that stands for Resilience, Education, Adventure, Community and Health, but the word itself perfectly describes what the organization does, which is […]
Around these parts, George Frideric Handel’s Messiah generally gets performed only in December, in advance of Christmas, frequently as a sing-along or featuring just the famous “Hallelujah” chorus, and always as it was written in English. This weekend, the Santa Barbara Choral Society is rolling out the beloved oratorio. This most familiar of choral pieces […]
Given its members’ history and the quartet’s “inverted” composition, it’s no surprise that Owls has been called “a dream group” by The New York Times. Featuring a distinctive instrumentation variation of the traditional string quartet that trades the second violinist for an additional cellist, the individual Owls are also no strangers to our area. Cellist […]
Anna Vocino and Loren Tarquinio have lived in the Santa Ynez Valley since just before the pandemic, when the formerly L.A.-based power comedy-writing-producing married couple turned their “getaway escape patch” into their full-time home. More than five years later the married partners are joining with two other couples with entertainment and/or winemaking backgrounds to produce […]
The Community Environmental Council’s Santa Barbara Earth Day festival – one of the longest-running such celebrations in the country – has become a massive two-day event full of exhibitors, speeches, music, workshops and more. The green extravaganza doesn’t arrive until the last weekend of the month, but given our history as the arguable birthplace of […]
April is always a big time of year for the Parkinson Association of Santa Barbara (PASB). That’s when the very local, very grassroots nonprofit organization puts together its symposium, an annual event that’s at once a community builder, educational offering, and social gathering. Which makes it not all that different from the ongoing activities of […]
Out of the Box, the local theater company that has been producing alternative contemporary musical theater for 15 years, soars all the way up into the heavens for its next show, Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812. Dave Malloy’s genre-defying musical adaptation of a scandalous 70-page segment from Tolstoy‘s famed 1869 novel War […]
Rubicon Theatre Company’s New Play Development Program both sponsors and benefits from a reading of The Journals of Adam and Eve, a two-person play inspired by the biblical characters, Mark Twain’s sense of humor, and A. R. Gurney’s Love Letters. The play, written by nine-time Emmy Award-winner Ed. Weinberger (Taxi, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, […]
Singer-songwriter Janis Ian isn’t expected to pick up her guitar and sing at the Riviera Theatre on Sunday morning, April 6, but the audience will still get good glimpses in her life and songbook via a preview screening of the new documentary Janis Ian: Breaking Silence. The movie, written and directed by Varda Bar-Kar, makes […]
Bouncer-bashful beware: You don’t have to be big, burly and buff to bound on over to Elings Park for the return of Big Bounce America, the biggest touring inflatable event in the world, featuring seven massive attractions. Everybody, even those with inflated egos, are welcome to wander through the giant array of inflatables, including a […]
Santa Barbara County Search and Rescue (SBCSAR), established decades ago by the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department to provide vital emergency search and rescue services for Santa Barbara County and surrounding areas, is an important first responder team for the community. The all-volunteer group of dedicated and highly trained search and rescue professionals is committed […]
Veteran Santa Barbara meditation leader Radhule Weininger’s Mindful Heart Programs has launched a new series for those who want to build their inner resilience via lecture, discussion, and connections with others and the natural world. The seven-step Deep Resilience program was catalyzed by the turbulent times we are living in, when many of us need […]
The pop chestnut “The Rose” sold a million copies for Bette Midler, who sang the ballad in the 1979 movie of the same name and took home a Grammy award to boot. But it was Amanda McBroom that wrote the song that has become a classic, one that Conway Twitty covered for a No. 1 […]
Sharon MaHarry burst through the proverbial glass ceiling in 1981 when she was named the first female creative director at Young & Rubicam, the advertising agency that helped to inspire Mad Men. It was quite an achievement for the copywriter, whose life had suddenly taken a challenging turn at eight when she came home from […]
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 […]