Tag archives: Granada

Three’s Company
By Richard Mineards   |   May 16, 2019

At the Granada it was time for the tony triumvirate of violinist Joshua Bell, cellist Steven Isserlis, and pianist Jeremy Denk to shine, part of the popular UCSB Arts & Lectures program. The talented threesome were in glorious harmony playing works by Mendelssohn, Shostakovich, Rachmaninoff and Ravel. A blockbuster show… Like Father, Like Daughter CAMA […]

Nachle Deewane 2019
By Richard Mineards   |   May 2, 2019

The Granada was full of Eastern promise when UCSB’s 6th annual Dhadkan Nachle Deewane dance competition, run by founders Soham Tikekar and Nishu Viswanathan, filled the stage with 20 dancers and 24 a cappella artists. The colorful and energized sold-out show included Hindi-film Fusion and Bhangra dance teams representing a host of colleges, including USC, […]

Tap into Stage Percussion
By Steven Libowitz   |   May 2, 2019

Pianist Jeremy Denk isn’t the only MacArthur Fellow returning to town under the auspices of Arts & Lectures this week. Michelle Dorrance, the founder of the New York City-based dance company that bears her name, won the prestigious prize back in 2015. ETM: Double Down is the title for her latest evening-length work that merges […]

Meet Me at the Granada
By Richard Mineards   |   May 2, 2019

The venerable Granada was the place to be when UCSB Arts & Lectures hosted the world premiere of the multi-talented 15-strong Silkroad Ensemble’s Heroes Take Their Stands with a 90-minute, five-piece concert, making ample use of the theater’s state of the art movie screen. Of particular note was Bharatanatyam dancer Aparna Ramaswamy, who added an […]

Legal Immigrant
By Richard Mineards   |   April 25, 2019

Multi-talented Scottish actor and performer Alan Cumming brought his highly entertaining show Legal Immigrant to the sold-out Granada, part of the popular UCSB Arts & Lectures program. The almost two-hour intermission-free performance, with a four-member backup band, was a meditation on his ten years as an American citizen and the experiences and change has witnessed […]

CAMA Concert
By Richard Mineards   |   April 11, 2019

CAMA – Community Arts Music Association – hosted a centennial season subscriber dinner at Opal just before the last performance of this season’s international series with the debut of the 128-year-old Royal Scottish National Orchestra under Danish music director Thomas Sondergard at the Granada. Kicking off with Symphony No.7 in C major by Finnish composer […]

Two for One
By Richard Mineards   |   March 29, 2019

Santa Barbara Choral Society has plenty to sing about as the tony troupe celebrates its 70th anniversary and the 25th anniversary of its director JoAnne Wasserman. To mark the double-header, longtime supporters Gary and Kate Rees hosted a sunset soirée for premier Canto donors at their charming mountainside home before next month’s anniversary concert at […]

Magnificent Mozart
By Richard Mineards   |   March 28, 2019

Santa Barbara Symphony was in fine form at the Granada when it presented Amadeus Live, with the talented musicians under Belgian conductor Dirk Brosse, music director of the Philadelphia Chamber Orchestra; the symphony chorus; and pianist Natasha Kislenko, a Music Academy of the West faculty member. The film about Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, based […]

Art Hacks
By Richard Mineards   |   March 28, 2019

Montecito attorney David Gersh has just published his sixth book, How to Collect Great Art on a Shoestring. David, who studied at UCLA and Harvard, says his latest work talks about how to acquire paintings by artists who are in the Guggenheim, the Whitney, and MoMA for just a few thousand dollars, not tens or […]

Into the Fold
By Richard Mineards   |   March 14, 2019

Lotusland hosted a fabulous feast of folded artwork with its new opening representing the work of 12 renowned origami artists throughout the U.S. The overflow crowd for Lotusland in Origami: Flora, Fauna, and Ganna included Asian art historian Meher McArthur and Montecito’s own artist Holly Sherwin, co-curators. Origami is no longer limited to Japan, with […]

Making the Rounds
By Richard Mineards   |   March 14, 2019

The mad social whirl was at full throttle when UCSB Arts & Lectures hosted parties for guest speakers at the Granada and Campbell Hall. The first was held at the charming Montecito residence of Audrey and Tim Fisher, the former home of actor James Brolin, for global photographer James Balog, who spoke about his new […]

En Pointe
By Richard Mineards   |   March 14, 2019

A mandatory evacuation scuppered my chances of watching the first show of Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet at the Granada, which featured George Balanchine’s The Four Temperaments, but I was able to catch the second day’s three-part performance under Scottish artistic director Ashley Wheater. The show kicked off impressively with Justin Peck‘s In Creases featuring two grand […]

Brossé & Mozart: Great Minds Sync Alike
By Steven Libowitz   |   March 14, 2019

Four years and at least seven of his own scores ago, the distinguished conductor-composer Dirk Brossé made his debut with the Santa Barbara Symphony with the Granada’s first live-to-screening synchronized musical performance since the installation of the theater’s state-of-the-art rear-projection film system. Brossé and the members of the orchestra who often also frequently freelance on […]

Microbubbling: A Fate Worse Than Death
By Mitchell Kriegman   |   March 14, 2019

“Quod, ut dicitur, si est homo bulla, eo magis senex” the Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro (116 BC – 27 BC) wrote in the first historical references to bubbles which means “If man is a microbubble, all the more so is an old man…” Ok I’ve translated “bulla” into its micro form. Perhaps that wasn’t […]

Dance Beyond Description as Joffrey Returns
By Steven Libowitz   |   February 28, 2019

Local dance lovers are in for a treat this week when the Joffrey Ballet, the veteran company considered among America’s elite, returns to the Granada for the first time in more than half a decade for two different programs spanning seven works. That’s a tall order even for one of the country’s most revered troupe […]

Twenty Years of Tony’s Tacos
By Richard Mineards   |   February 28, 2019

Los Arroyos, the popular Mexican eatery on Coast Village Road, is celebrating 20 years in business. Owner Tony Arroyo opened his first location in downtown Santa Barbara on West Figueroa Street in 1999 and launched his outlet in our rarefied enclave in 2004. The chain now has branches in Camarillo and Goleta, with a nosheteria […]

Leadership in Turbulent Times
By Richard Mineards   |   February 28, 2019

World-renowned presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times bestselling author Doris Kearns Goodwin packed the Granada when she spoke about Leadership in Turbulent Times, the title of her seventh book published last year. The tome is a culmination of Goodwin’s five-decade career of studying American presidents focusing on Abraham Lincoln, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, […]

Trocks en Pointe
By Richard Mineards   |   February 7, 2019

It was a delightful night of high camp when Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo performed a hilarious program at the packed Granada, part of the of the popular UCSB Arts & Lectures series. Music by Chopin, Verdi, Glazunov accompanied the balletic high jinx. Having seen the 45-year-old company a number of times in New […]

An Evening with Albright
By Lynda Millner   |   January 31, 2019

UCSB Arts & Lectures presented “An Evening with Madeleine Albright” to a packed house at the Granada Theatre. In case you don’t remember, she was the first woman Secretary of State and the highest-ranking woman in the history of the U.S. government in 1997. Currently she is chair of Albright Stonebridge Group, which is a […]

Albright, Albright, Albright
By Richard Mineards   |   January 31, 2019

It was Albright on the night when America’s first female U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright spoke to a sold-out Granada audience as part of the popular UCSB Arts & Lectures series. Albright, 81, who became a U.S. citizen in 1957 after leaving her native Czechoslovakia, served in the White House from 1997 to 2001 […]