Tag archives: musician
Where were you when you first heard Bob Dylan? Arguably one of the greatest poets and musical artists of our generation, Bob Dylan has been covered and worshiped by fans and artists of all walks of life. Born as Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota, the musician has been in the game for sixty years, […]
The Great American Songbook has captivated singers from Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra to modern pop stars such as Rod Stewart and Linda Ronstadt. But rarely has success with the timeless tunes from the 1930s-50s come so surprisingly as with Steve Tyrell. A throaty crooner with roots in Houston’s gritty Italian neighborhood whose first love […]
Guitarist Al Di Meola was merely fantasizing when he told a friend back in 1974 that he’d “give anything” to be able to play in Chick Corea’s Return To Forever jazz fusion band. After all, the Jersey City-bred Di Meola was only 19 and still studying at Berklee College of Music in Boston. But the […]
It’s taken a while, but audiences have finally stopped coming to Creed Bratton’s concerts expecting to hang out with his self-named character from The Office. “I’d be talking or singing and they’d shout out my lines from the show,” he explained over the phone from his Los Angeles home recently. “So I’d just stop and […]
Melissa Manchester’s career began at an early age, including studying piano and harpsichord at the Manhattan School of Music, singing commercial jingles at 15, and serving as a staff writer for Chappell Music while still attending Manhattan’s High School of Performing Arts. After serving as a member of the Harlettes, Bette Midler’s back-up singers, Manchester […]
Despite the fact that she is Kenny Loggins’ youngest daughter, and half-sister to Crosby Loggins, once a stalwart on the Santa Barbara music scene who was the winner of MTV’s Rock the Cradle back in 2008, it wasn’t pre-ordained that Hana Aluna would become a professional musician. Sure, Kenny wrote and recorded the lullaby with […]
On a personal note, I remember Geoffrey Rutkowski, former principal cellist of the Santa Barbara Symphony, who has died aged 78. A charming, gentle and enormously talented individual, Geoffrey joined the music faculty at UCSB in 1968 until his retirement in 2013 as a Distinguished Professor Emeritus. He played all over the world, including two […]
Watching David Crosby: Remember My Name at a SBIFF screening at a sold-out Lobero Theatre back on Super Bowl Sunday last February 3 was a thrilling but almost excruciating experience, made even more so knowing that the aging Santa Barbara-raised rock star was seated just a few rows away, watching himself sing, and squirm, on […]
Marin Alsop is a serious classical musician, perhaps even more so than the average conductor, given what she had to go through to accomplish what she has over a 35-year career. Along with her many other achievements, Alsop became the first woman ever to lead a major American orchestra when she was appointed music director […]
For its 2019 opera presentation, Music Academy of the West is providing the vocal and instrumental fellows the chance to take on a very modern work that has only had a handful of previous productions. Cold Mountain – the 2014 saga from the prolific composer Jennifer Higdon – is adapted from Charles Frazier’s epic Civil […]
Five-time Grammy Award winner and 2002 MacArthur “Genius Grant” Award recipient double bassist Edgar Meyer negotiates a rarely traveled road as a star in both the classical music and bluegrass worlds, where he works as both a performer and a composer. Hailed dryly by The New Yorker as “the most remarkable virtuoso in the relatively […]
Local musician David Segall launched his newest single and video, “Touch of Love,” at a free, public event on Thursday, June 27 at Oniracom SB. The video of the song was weaved with the Plastic-Free July initiative, and featured the “Ocean Guardian” students of Adams Elementary School, our own Montecito Water District Water Conservation Coordinator […]
The Santa Barbara singer-songwriter community was devastated when the tirelessly eclectic producers, sound engineer, and songcrafter Robinson Eikenberry died unexpectedly on July 4, 2017. The 35-year local resident who graduated from Crane School in Montecito was honored soon after with a memorial concert at the Lobero Theatre, where many of the Santa Barbara artists he […]
Aussie music maker Peter Clark has debuted his homage to our Eden by the Beach, 16 months after the Thomas Fire and devastating mudslides. Montecito-based Peter, whose songs have been recorded by Eartha Kitt, Jane Russell, and Don Ho, is currently producing 2013 Teen Star winner Mary-Grace Langhorne, whose first CD will debut next month. […]
Rock singer Ronnie Platt had been making most of his money as a truck driver in Chicago for the better part of 25 years – singing along to Kansas’ “Dust in the Wind” and “Carry On Wayward Son” on classic rock radio in the cab – when someone forwarded him the press release indicating that […]
Three years ago this month, mandolinist-composer Ashley Broder released Two Trees, her first solo recording, which was produced by Ventura resident Kevin McCormick, the longtime bassist for Jackson Browne. Just last month the Ventura-bred, now Santa Barbara-based Broder did a mini-tour including two local dates that introduced her new trio featuring fiddler Ben Schreiber and […]
The Wikipedia page on Danny Kortchmar suggests that his work as a session musician and more going back four decades and longer “helped define the signature sound of the singer-songwriter era of the 1970s.” The online people-powered encyclopedia is known for hyperbole, but in this case there can be little argument. After all Kortchmar worked […]
The list of bands, records, and concerts that bassist-keyboardist Pete Sears has played with or on over a half-century-plus career contains some very well-known names and songs. He recorded the Rod Stewart albums Gasoline Alley, Every Picture Tells A Story, and Never a Dull Moment, including the hit singles “Maggie May” (Sears played the celeste) […]
Musician Jon Batiste held an afternoon open interview and evening solo concert at UCSB on January 11, via the Arts & Lectures Programming, in conjunction with the UCSB Music Department, sponsored by KCSB FM, KCBX FM, and Potek Wines. Batiste honed his chops at age six as the drummer in a family band and tuned […]
To the historic Union Hotel in Los Alamos when English rocker Alan Parsons, who has been nominated for 11 Grammys, celebrated the 20th anniversary of his half century with a heavenly host of friends and music stars. The songwriter and record producer, who worked on the Beatles’ Abbey Road and Let It Be albums, as […]
