Back in January, 2020 was looking to be a pretty exciting year for the Music Academy of the West. Not only had the summer music institute respected around the world just hired Jamie Broumas, the former Director of Classical and New Music Programs at Washington’s famed Kennedy Center, for the newly created position of Chief […]
It was exactly one week since George Floyd died in custody of the Minneapolis Police when Glen Phillips and I talked earlier this week over the phone. The issue of institutional racism and police brutality was weighing heavily on his mind, and would show up six hours later in that Monday night’s solo Zoom show, […]
Fight fatigue and pep up the popular pandemic platform Late in April, The New York Times published an instantly popular essay called “Why Zoom is Terrible.” The piece posed that the problem with the platform is that the way the video images are digitally encoded and decoded, altered and adjusted, patched and synthesized introduces such […]
Clarinetist Narek Arutyunian was supposed to make his Ojai debut on May 3 for the Chamber On The Mountain series that honors the traditional while celebrating the innovative. However the COVID-19 pandemic had other plans, so instead Arutyunian recorded a concert from his home in Queens, New York, exclusively for Chamber On The Mountain donors, […]
Having your CEO depart in the middle of a pandemic that caused cancellation of the rest of the season’s concerts probably isn’t the best thing for building the confidence of the local classical music community. Fortunately, the Santa Barbara Symphony was able to announce its Interim CEO, Kathryn Martin, even before the then-current Executive Director/CEO […]
SBCC School of Extended Learning’s summer session got underway earlier this week, but it’s never too late to join the ongoing classes, particularly now that all of their offerings are online. Among the selections in the Spirituality, Self-Management and Psychology sections are beginning and intermediate sections of “Nature and Self-Healing,” where students can explore the […]
Also taking to the great outdoors this week is the Santa Barbara Ecstatic Dance Co-op, which features music programmed by members of the community who are encouraged to express themselves through their choices of songs, rhythms, and beats. Its last dance took place at Divinitree Yoga studio the first Friday in March before bowing to […]
Carpinteria Qigong/tai chi teacher Jessica Kolbe was one of the last to shut down in personal classes, only giving up her gatherings that were fighting the spread of COVID-19 through social distancing on Carpinteria State Beach when the statewide stay-at-home orders became official in mid-March. She’s been offering online classes ever since, with the more […]
In the pre-pandemic era, last weekend would have marked the Topanga Banjo Fiddle Contest and Folk Festival’s 60th annual event, a downhome acoustic instrument extravaganza that is rivaled around these parts only by Santa Barbara’s own similarly-themed Fiddle Convention and Festival, which still has high hopes of holding its event in the fall. Instead, Topanga […]
The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics has streamed more than 30 hours of videos of events by KITP’s visiting scientists since it launched the series of curated talks from its archives in mid-March. New videos are added each Wednesday, with a recent week’s interesting entries including “Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car […]
Festival artist Jennifer Lemay, who started street painting with chalk for I Madonnari in the festival’s second year in 1988 and has missed only a handful of I-Mads over the ensuing 32 years, is joining nearly 60 other artists in creating works in her own driveway to celebrate the Memorial Day Weekend event. We caught […]
Street painting artists have been compared to masochists, in that their hobby of drawing with chalk on the sidewalk has become an obsession, back pain and sore knees ignored in a mission that is exhibited annually on the pavement in front of the Santa Barbara’s Old Mission during the I Madonnari Italian Street Painting Festival […]
If things were different, if the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 hadn’t turned into a global pandemic shutting down almost everything across the world, this would have been a weekend of wonder for Otto Layman. The theater director had planned a big blowout of a show to serve as his crowning achievement in a career that […]
If things were different, if the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 hadn’t turned into a global pandemic shutting down almost everything across the world, this would have been a weekend of wonder for Otto Layman. The theater director had planned a big blowout of a show to serve as his crowning achievement in a career […]
Nick Meador, a Bay Area-based transformational life coach, holistic event producer, and mindful entrepreneur, is familiar to local seekers through his participatory workshops at the Lucidity Festival at Live Oak Campground each spring. Meador is also the founder of Soul Lift Cacao, which markets organic ceremonial cacao – the natural, unprocessed form of chocolate grown […]
Enjoy a full day of yoga with a wide swath of Santa Barbara County yoga teachers from Carpinteria to Santa Maria – including many of your favorites and lots of chances to practice with someone new – in a special participatory benefit to raise money for the Santa Barbara County Foodbank, whose goal is “moving […]
Gail Brenner, the longtime Santa Barbara-based clinical psychologist who held regular weekly Meetups for meditation and more, left town for an extended journey around the world shortly after publishing her book Suffering is Optional: A Spiritual Guide to Freedom from Self-Judgment and Feelings of Inadequacy in November 2018. Now back in the U.S. after a […]
Elissa Amina’s Sufi Yoga classes are continuing through May as an opportunity to explore breathwork, yoga, and meditation while invoking the divine qualities to open the heart to expansive states, and bring healing on a cellular level. Amina teaches a combination of yogas including Kundalini, Yin, Naam and Hatha, plus Pure Heart, Pure Body, and […]
AHA! has long received kudos in town for its success in equipping teenagers, parents, and educators with social and emotional intelligence and strategies to serve as an antidote to everything from apathy to despair. In addition, AHA! has had great success interrupting hate-based behaviors such as bullying. The organization’s programs have become touchpoints for transforming […]
With its special streaming presentations of main stage operas on pandemic pause, Opera Santa Barbara takes a youthful turn, offering an online reprise of the culmination of last summer’s Santa Barbara Youth Opera two-week camp: a production that brings Homer’s epic tale to life via Ben Moore and Kelly Rourke‘s Odyssey. The livestream of the […]
Back in the academic art world, the AD&A Museum at UCSB has launched a preview of “Field Day,” its annual Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition. The pre-show features projects in progress and studio shots, revealing the process of creating works for the show that includes sculpture, photography, installations, video, and painting. The exhibit […]
This issue arrives on May 7, which, in normal times, would have been a time for art lovers to gather downtown on lower State Street and nearby blocks to partake in the gallery, museum, and boutique self-guided tour known as 1st Thursday. That would’ve meant huge crowds jamming the two big open spaces at Sullivan […]
Claudia Hoag McGarry has been involved in writing and literature for decades. Her resume includes more than a dozen screenplays, several novels and, more recently, a handful of theatrical plays as well as 30 years of serving as a Santa Barbara City College English skills teacher. Then COVID-19 arrived, shut down just about everything, and […]
Tristan Harrison, founder of the Center for Humane Technology; Nichol Bradford, CEO and founder of the Willow Group and co-founder of Transformative Technology Lab; Liana Sananda Gillooly, development officer, MAPS; and Jamie Wheal, co-author of global bestseller Stealing Fire and co-founder of the Flow Genome Project are among a dozen thought-leaders, researchers, academics and entrepreneurs […]
Jenny Boyar’s Sunday Writing Series at Yoga Soup – which takes place the first Sunday of the month May-July, stems from the premise that writing can turn things that feel intangible and difficult into something tangible while also allowing us to invite others into our experience, something especially valuable in moments of isolation. The primary […]
Barbara Rose Sherman – a Yoga Alliance E-RYT-500 Certified Instructor who is also a UCLA Trained Mindfulness Facilitator (TMF) and UCLA Mindfulness Awareness Practices affiliated instructor as well as a Certified Meditation Teacher (CMT) – invites everyone to join her online to nourish and nurture yourself during the coronavirus crisis. Sherman will lead a restorative […]
Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks’ Ojai-based Foundation for Conscious Living has created a number of new resources for meeting the coronavirus crisis on the home page of the organization’s website, where visitors are able to connect with its Restoring Resourcefulness faculty for coaching and education about how to shift from fear to create wellbeing and creative […]
Can the Mind Be Quiet? That’s the timeless and perhaps uber-timely theme in the novel coronavirus era for Krishnamurti Foundation America’s annual May Gathering, which in our “old normal” times would draw hundreds of higher-consciousness seekers to the KFA’s bucolic grounds in Ojai, reminiscent of the days when the Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti himself would […]
The Santa Barbara Institute for Conscious Studies’ most recent newsletter includes more updates, meditation sessions and other materials from founder Alan Wallace along with another gem: a prayer and practice involving Tārā the Curer of Infectious Disease. H. E. Dagyum Chenmo Kusho Sakya has advised, translated and offered the practice at this time of global […]
Montecito yoga-meditation-QiGong teacher Chloe Conger has added a new online class, Qigong and Meditation, taking place every Saturday at 10 am, with admission by donation. Conger’s class is a moving meditation (like Tai Chi) that connects us to the effortless flow and pulse of energy that runs throughout the body, she explains on her website. […]
Patagonia, the Ventura-based designer/distributor of outdoor clothing and gear, is helping the local community combat the coronavirus through offering several yoga classes online free of charge. A three-part Yoga & Wellness Series with Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, Yoga Instructor and Wellness Coach Julie Peacock, comes to a close on April 28 with a 30-minute vinyasa practice […]
DiviniTree Yoga, the studio located across the street from city hall in downtown Santa Barbara, doesn’t have any workshops planned over our next week, and also doesn’t offer as many different streaming classes in the time of COVID-19 as its two main competitors. But newbies to the virtual studio can sample all of them for […]
Santa Barbara Yoga Center’s free monthly introduction to the practice, principles and purposes of yoga haven’t been postponed due to the pandemic. They’ve migrated over to the Zoom platform, where veteran teacher Kat Connors-Longo will lead the two-hour class designed for beginning students who would like to learn the basics before attending an ongoing class, […]
Yoga Soup, the studio located down by the Santa Barbara train station that often serves as a bookstore, gift shop, and gathering place during our “old normal” times, has managed to schedule upwards of 70 classes available via the Zoom service each week. A few weeks into the transition, Yoga Soup has also started to […]
When the coronavirus crisis first arrived in America, Sarah McLean figured she’d hunker down with her husband in the couple’s recently-purchased Santa Barbara home to wait out the shelter-in-place situation. The quarter-century veteran contemporary meditation and mindfulness teacher who co-founded the Montecito Meditation Center last year considers herself something of an introvert, and laying low […]
What do communication techniques have to do with spirituality? Perhaps only everything we encounter on the human plane, as Nonviolent Communication, aka NVC, according to some, goes far beyond self-help communication skills to serve as a consciousness based on the intention to create positive connections. The core idea is that rather than be motivated by […]
If COVID-19 hadn’t caused everything to come to a close, and everyone to halt, suddenly in the middle of March, George Yatchisin would be hosting the sixth annual “Spirits in the Air: Potent Potable Poetry” reading at The Good Lion lounge this Friday, April 24, when the “Drinkable Landscape” columnist for Edible Santa Barbara and […]
Veteran local singer-songwriter and educator Nicola Gordon has been hosting showcases at MichaelKate Interiors for years. But with the showroom shuttered during the pandemic, the music has migrated over to Zoom. The third showcase in her now twice-a-month series takes place on April 29, during the usual on-site date of the last Wednesday of the […]
Among the other area artists who are performing frequently via Facebook Live, Instagram or Zoom are the great Glen Phillips, the frontman for Santa Barbara-born pop band Toad the Wet Sprocket and a significant solo singer-songwriter. Phillips, who lived for more than two decades in Montecito, has been playing live acoustic living room sessions several […]
Tina Schlieske and her sister Laura are sheltering in place separately in Santa Barbara, but it’s hard to keep sisters apart for weeks on end, especially if they get along as well as the Schlieskes, who have been making music together for nearly all of their lives. Tina is best known for her solo gigs […]