Pianist and conductor Mitsuko Uchida, Musical America’s 2022 Artist of the Year and a Grammy nominee in 2023, serves as music director of this year’s Ojai Music Festival, the 78th edition of four days of musical brainstorming in an enchanted setting amid audiences eagerly anticipating challenge and discovery. The 2024 Ojai Festival takes place June […]

The Santa Barbara Music Club Scholarships – which regularly produces free concerts featuring professional and other classical musicians in town – has been awarding scholarships to instrumental and vocal music students from Santa Barbara County. The scholarships provide a measure of support, aid, and encouragement to students from local schools and teaching studios. The hope […]

Opera Santa Barbara’s 2024-25 season doesn’t start until November, but the opportunity to purchase single (non-subscription) tickets to OSB’s three productions for less than $30 ends with the month of May. The season features Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci (November 8 & 10), Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (February 21 & 23) and Donizetti’s The Daughter of the […]

Westmont alumnus Dave Talbott (piano) leads the annual All-City Hymn Sing on Sunday, June 2, at 3 pm at Shoreline Community Church, 935 San Andres St. Talbott, the resident musician at the Mount Hermon Christian Conference Center for four decades, will lead attendees in an hour of singing everyone’s favorite hymns. Talbott, who lives at […]

Mitchell Thomas, professor of theater arts, won a coveted Indy Award for Directing for his role in staging Godspell. The May 20 event was the first time the Santa Barbra Independent has hosted the awards since the pandemic.  Thomas was most recently awarded an Indy for directing Pride and Prejudice in 2019. The jazz band […]

Santa Barbara recently hosted the 7th annual American Riviera Classic Pickleball tournament, an event that has grown from a small gathering to a prominent community affair. Coordinated by USAPA Pickleball Ambassadors Richard Salzberg and Barb Kloos, the tournament had 275 participants this year, reflecting the sport’s exponential growth in the region. Pickleball – a sport […]

Nashville-based singer-songwriter and recording artist Jordan Asher Huffman, who has been named One805’s 2024 Mental Wellness Ambassador and is lending his single “Out Loud” to serve as this year’s anthem for all One805LIVE! events, has been added to the all-star lineup put together by Steve Postell for the nonprofit’s afternoon bash at Sunstone Winery. Jordan […]

Pulitzer Prize finalist, culture critic, producer, and screenwriter Xochitl Gonzalez is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of its newsletter Brooklyn, Everywhere, about class, gentrification, and the American Dream. Her debut novel, Olga Dies Dreaming, was a critical fave in 2022, while the follow-up, Anita de Monte Laughs Last, came out this […]

Incandescent is the intriguing title of this year’s MFA Thesis Exhibition at UCSB’s Art, Design & Architecture Museum (AD&A), on view May 17 to June 9. The seven grad students with heritage from Mexico, Nigeria, Iran, the Philippines, and elsewhere, drew on Michel Serres’ notion of incandescence to create art that emphasizes the interconnectedness of […]

Normally at this time of year, UCSB Music’s voice program would either mount a full-scale opera or a collection of staged opera scenes, but for 2024, the show has morphed into an Opera Gala, which is not only a collaboration between the music and theater-dance departments, but also a tale of two cities as UCSB […]