Tag archives: jazz

UCSB Music Goes Live, with Tech Support from SBCC
By Steven Libowitz   |   June 3, 2021

Last October, Santa Barbara City College’s Jim Mooy used the Jamulus audio platform and live-streamed videos of each performer generated via Zoom to direct a synchronous audio and video stream of a university ensemble performance of SBCC’s Lunch Break Jazz Ensemble concert.  This week, Mooy lends his expertise to his counterparts at UCSB’s Music Department, […]

Westmont’s COVID-safe Concerts
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 7, 2021

Westmont Music kicked off its spring student showcase series with a pandemic-proof performance of Gabriel Fauré’s sublime “Requiem” in its annual Masterworks Concert. Westmont found a new space for its spring reading of the piece, with the widely spaced singers vocalizing from the bleachers high above the orchestra located on the track at the college’s […]

Music and Much More with Marsalis
By Steven Libowitz   |   November 12, 2020

The election will be three days in the rear-view mirror when The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra Septet with Wynton Marsalis performing “The Sounds of Democracy” streams for free as part of UCSB Arts & Lectures’ Thematic Learning Initiative, its community conversation arm in conjunction with events. Led by trumpeter-composer Wynton Marsalis and featuring seven […]

Running into GSAC Championships
By Scott Craig   |   November 12, 2020

Westmont cross-country first-year students Caleb Mettler and Anneline Breytenbach, Golden State Athletic Conference Athletes of the Month for October, lead their teams into the GSAC Championship on Saturday, November 7, at William Jessup University in Rocklin. Mettler, a San Clemente High School graduate, claimed second place in race two of The Master’s Invitational on September […]

Crossing Over
By Guillaume Doane   |   November 5, 2020

If you’ve attended any of the hundreds of concerts performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the last 36 years, there’s a strong chance you would have glimpsed the orchestra’s longest standing member. His name is Jack Cousin and he has been a pillar of the orchestra’s nine-strong bass section since 1974, when he joined […]

Jazz Society Joins the Jump to Streaming
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 16, 2020

The Santa Barbara Jazz Society doesn’t have much in its own archives to air during our shelter-in-place era, but the folks who run it are offering some links to fill in the gaps until the nonprofit can stage its next monthly concert at SOhO after the all clear order. If live is king, you’ll want […]

Kirtan, Mantra, Sound Healing, and Soul Songs
By Steven Libowitz   |   March 12, 2020

Montecito-raised musician Joss Jaffe, who basically created his own sub-genre of dub-mantra by combining the rhythms of reggae with chanting and world jazz, is back in town for a final show with frequent partner Johanna Beekman. Jaffe, a Top-Ten New Age Billboard chanting artist whose four albums have been critically acclaimed, teams with Beekman, whose […]

Pop Tarts
By Steven Libowitz   |   February 13, 2020

Elsewhere in pop music, drummer Sammy Miller’s mission to bring jazz to the people via the young members of his seven-piece Congregation, finds the “evangelists of swing” making a proselytizing visit to Santa Barbara, where the Grammy Award-nominated, Juilliard-trained Miller and Co. will draw on a century of American songs to share the power of […]

A Little Garden Music
By Richard Mineards   |   October 24, 2019

It was another high note when the Women’s Auxiliary of the Music Academy of the West hosted its second annual benefit Music in the Gardens on the Miraflores campus, with a record 400 guests raising around $80,000 to benefit the community access program, which provides subsidized and free tickets to MAW events. Themed American Rhythms, […]

Jazz Ensemble Hits High Note at SOhO
By Joanne A Calitri   |   December 6, 2018

The UCSB Jazz Ensemble combos directed by Dr. Jon Nathan held a three-hour jazz lunch concert at SOhO on Sunday, December 2. The jam was sold out, with standing room only the entire time. Kudos to SOhO for packing the club on a busy Sunday afternoon during the holidays. The gig started off with the […]

Jazzy Jeff
By Richard Mineards   |   November 15, 2018

Actor Jeff Goldblum, who has starred in many of Hollywood’s top-grossing films, including Jurassic Park and Independence Day, showed off his musical talents at UCSB’s Campbell Hall when his Mildred Snitzer Orchestra entertained a packed house. An accomplished pianist, Goldblum, 66, and his jazz band of friends play regularly at L.A.’s Rockwell Table and Stage […]

Pop Notes and Jazz Jottings
By Steven Libowitz   |   September 27, 2018

The calendar is crammed as the new arts season arrives in earnest, although the biggest place in the land is more of a warm-weather venue. That would be the Santa Barbara Bowl, where it’s actually, unironically, unlikely to rain when Alanis Morissette takes the stage on Friday, September 27, followed two days later by the […]

All That Jazz
By Richard Mineards   |   September 13, 2018

Montecito music man Peter Clark has retired as president of the 23-year-old Santa Barbara Jazz Society to be replaced by local artist Natalie Wilson. Peter, 80, was accompanied by his glamorous wife, Gloria, when he made the announcement to 200 club members at SOhO, where the group holds its monthly concerts, with the Los Angeles-based […]

Fire, Flood, Musical Muses, and “One Note” with Lloyd
By Steven Libowitz   |   September 8, 2018

Mysticism is made manifest via the spiritually inspired saxophone played by Charles Lloyd, the jazz artist whose career began in Memphis in the 1950s, found stardom in the 1960s (when his Forest Flower was the first-ever million-selling jazz album), became an inner-seeking Big Sur recluse in the ’70s and resurrected himself in the ’90s as […]

Music Review: SB Jazz Collective
By Joanne A Calitri   |   September 6, 2018

Jazz. In a decade of electronic desktop computer music and musically void cover bands, we find a new local straight no chaser band, the SB Jazz Collective [SBJZ], designed by millennial and UCSB grad Andrew Williams. To get a taste of this ear candy, head over to their next gig at SOhO nightclub on Tuesday, […]

All about Alberta
By Steven Libowitz   |   May 31, 2018

Jazz and blues legend Alberta Hunter – who reigned from the 1920s-1950s – did what would be almost unthinkable nowadays, setting aside her life as an artist at the peak of her career to become a hospital nurse shortly after her mother died. But when she was forced to retire at age 70 (though she […]

McEuen to Greene & Sitars to Sax
By Joanne A Calitri   |   April 5, 2018

Returning to the live performing circuit but no stranger to it, Jonathan McEuen performed an “Americana Showcase” in Carpinteria on March 24. With him were Mark Corradetti [Nashville] on lead bass, Phil Salazar fiddle [Ventura], Alvino M. Bennett drums [Chicago/Burbank], Sean Ingoldsby [Ojai] bass, and Mark Searcy acoustic guitar [Ventura]. The opening set show-cased 11 […]

Spreading the Jam, One Last Time
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 5, 2018

Jeff Elliott has been running the Santa Barbara jazz jam at SOhO even before it was at SOhO, or at least before it was located where SOhO is now. The trumpeter/keyboardist/singer has led the house band/rhythm section backing up any and all musicians – professional and decidedly otherwise – who desired the chance to sit […]

Gaby Gaby Hey
By Steven Libowitz   |   March 8, 2018

Gaby Moreno moved from Guatemala to Los Angeles at 18 to pursue a career in music, and really never looked back. Not even musically, at least not for almost a decade. The singer-songwriter who blends blues, jazz, ’60s rock ‘n’ roll, and Latin American influences into something she calls “Spanish folk-soul” fell in love with […]

Jazz Musicians Groovin’ High
By Joanne A Calitri   |   January 11, 2018

The Jazz Ensemble at UCSB held its end-of-session concerts in early December, despite being the first day of the Thomas Fire with smoke in the air and evacuations. The 50 musicians and four vocalists range from professionals to students forming into seven mini-orchestral jazz bands. The bands are led by Jazz Ensemble director Jon Nathan […]