The launch of CAMA’s Masterseries at the Lobero with two virtuoso musicians, Avi Avital on mandolin and Hanzhi Wang on accordion, was a heady combination. Israeli Avital, who has performed with the Community Arts Music Association twice – with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra in 2018 and Les Violins du Roy 2021 – was in […]

The Westmont Orchestra will perform one of Tchaikovsky’s most well-known compositions at the Fall Orchestra Concert on Friday, October 20, at 7 pm in Westmont’s Page Hall; and Sunday, October 22, at 3 pm in Hahn Hall at the Music Academy of the West. The concerts are free and open to the public. For more […]

More than 250 musicians and singers packed the sprawling stage of the venerable Granada when the Santa Barbara Symphony, under veteran maestro Nir Kabaretti, kicked off its 71st season with An Ode to Joy, Hope and Community. It was the symphony’s first performance of Beethoven’s 9th – marking the 200th anniversary of the German composer’s […]

Chamber music is alive and well in Santa Barbara, if having three qualifying, locally-generated concerts in a single week is any indication. Camerata Pacifica, the ensemble series founded originally as Bach Camerata by flutist Adrian Spence in 1990 that has become widely respected and revered for the virtuosity exhibited by its world-class musicians and the […]

You can’t fault Elizabeth Roe for expressing unbridled enthusiasm for returning to the Music Academy for her first purely public performance in town since spending the summer of 2001 as a fellow at the institute. Jerry Lowenthal was her mentor and Michael Towbes her compeer during the idyllic eight weeks, and now she’s heading back […]

Neither Santa Barbara-raised electronic-pop-music pioneer Jimmy Tamborello nor Ben Gibbard, singer-songwriter-guitarist of the pop band Death Cab for Cutie, imagined that their collaboration 20 years ago would be anything more than an enjoyable one-off. But suddenly The Postal Service – so named because the pair put the project together by the U.S. mail, with Tamborello […]

Siegwart ‘Zig’ Reichwald was officially installed as Adams chair of music and worship at Westmont in a day that featured chamber musicians, the college choir, orchestra and chapel band performing music from the Psalms, Felix Mendelssohn, and rock band U2.  As part of the formal installation ceremony, President Gayle D. Beebe urged Reichwald to bring […]

Opera Santa Barbara kicked off its 30th season on a particularly high note at the Granada when it staged Bizet’s 1875 masterpiece Carmen, the first time in seven years. The hugely entertaining three-hour, four-act show with Kostis Protopapas, general director, conducting, featured mezzo-soprano Sarah Saturnino, a Grand Finalist in the Metropolitan Opera’s Laffont Competition, in […]

Charley Crockett, a Texas original who draws from traditional hillbilly music, vintage soul, and R&B to give his old-school country twang an extra earthy feel, opened UCSB A&L’s season at the Arlington almost exactly a year ago. The Americana Music Awards’ Emerging Artist of the Year for 2021 heads back to the venue on Friday, […]

Club jazz gets its due at SOhO this week, with a series of local shows. M.O.B. Quintet reconvenes for an eclectic blend of Euro-Brazil progressive jazz and music from the 1970s ECM/Fusion era on October 8. Italian pianist Antonio Artese, who oscillates between our local foothills and the hills of Tuscany, hooks up again with […]