Tag archives: Revels
Susan Keller’s Santa Barbara Revels threw a Revels Equinox concert in the Lobero Theatre Courtyard, celebrating the changing seasons. In December, the group – under new musical director Dauri Kennedy – will host its 9th annual equinox concert, The Ghosts of Haddon Hall, at the Lobero (which I last saw 11 years ago). Music to […]
Santa Barbara Revels, under founder Susan Keller, held its 16th annual May Day Celebration at the Paseo Nuevo. Mica Basilici, the tony troupe’s song leader, taught fascinated members of the public spring-themed songs, while the Revels dancer leader Helen Pasley taught “Sellinger’s Round,” a May Day circle dance dating from 1670. The dancers also performed […]
Santa Barbara Revels’ 16th annual Pub Sing on St. Patrick’s Day was really up the creek! More than 60 warblers, including founder Susan Keller, joined in the merry mayhem at the Creekside Restaurant & Bar in Goleta singing a selection of Irish tunes, sea shanties, familiar folk songs, traditional favorites, and novelty ditties with Andrew […]
With its 2024 annual Christmastime show, Santa Barbara Revels becomes the first of the regional Revels companies to present the organization’s newest endeavor: The Revels: A Winter Solstice Celebration – Tales from Ellis Island. Inaugurated in Cambridge just last year, the story finds a Mexican medical supervisor informing the newly-arrived immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and […]
The Scottish bagpipes sounded loud and clear at the University Club when Susan Keller’s Santa Barbara Revels celebrated its seventh annual Equinox concert celebrating the changing seasons. The al fresco evening on the Sola Patio combined selections from three centuries of Spanish and Mexican music of the New World, in an echo of the Revels […]
In recent years, Santa Barbara Revels has used the season change from summer to fall to offer its annual Equinox Concert, with a wide-ranging selection of music that marks its own transition from last year’s to this year’s productions of The Christmas Revels, the organization’s biggest event of the year. To that end, the Equinox […]
A page from our Eden by the Beach’s own history comes to life when Yankee sailors meet Spanish Rancheros at Casa de la Guerra in the Christmas Revels at the Lobero Theatre. Based on actual events from the 1830s woven into a lavish theatrical experience, the Revels, now in its 14th season, featured a company […]
More than a dozen community companies around the country present Christmas Revels performances this December, including such places as Lebanon, New Hampshire; Boulder, Colorado; and Oakland, each of which reworks shows created by the flagship company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The shows bring together people of all ages and backgrounds — both on stage and in […]
Susan Keller’s 13-year-old Santa Barbara Revels, after what seems an eternity of pandemic doldrums, is revving up for action and hosted an Equinox concert at the University Club for 80 guests. Susan also announced the group’s Yuletide concert, with a California 1830s theme, at the Lobero on December 18-19, its first live performance in three […]
We’ll leave it up to the listener to decide if the new CD from Mike Dawson & The Smokin Kills lives up to its title. But we can tell you that the guy fronting the band is the real deal: Dawson is the former longtime DJ, music director, and producer at KTYD, Santa Barbara’s classic […]
Santa Barbara Revels, presenting its 11th anniversary production at the Lobero, moved to Ireland this year after its Alta California Rancho period piece in 2017. “We wanted to honor the strength and courage of the intrepid Irish emigrants who left their homeland in the early 1900s, specially those who might have traveled on the S.S. […]
Dreamtime Continuum has been one of Santa Barbara’s most eclectic ensembles since Sudama Mark Kennedy first formed the group way back in 1994 as an outlet for his all-encompassing world music approach that he came by naturally as the son in a diplomatic family. The group underwent a few personnel changes over the years and […]
Santa Barbara Revels, presenting its 10th anniversary production at the Lobero, stayed closer to home this year with its theme from the Alta California Rancho period. Written by my Journal colleague Erin Graffy and Revels artistic director Susan Keller, the 1835-era production centered around the nuptials of Anita de la Guerra, daughter of the presidio’s […]
Santa Barbara-born, Berklee-trained blues guitarist-singer-songwriter Alastair Greene has been plying his trade professionally for 20 years now, but the last seven or so has seen him put his own trio on the back burner in favor of a lucrative role as sideman to Alan Parsons, one of progressive-rock’s progenitors, who also lives locally. But now […]
Santa Barbara Revels founder and fifth-generation Californian Susan Keller moved to Canada with her new husband after graduating from Stanford but returned to California, sans husband, some years later. She is not only a lifelong stage and TV performer but has also earned a law degree from UCLA. She moved to Montecito in 1994 with […]
