Social gridlock reigned at vintner and animal activist Gretchen Lieff’s La Lieff tasting room in the Funk Zone when she hosted a Hearts & Rosé bash for 100 guests on Valentine’s Day. Singer Nicole Sophia entertained on guitar while DJ Joseph Souza provided a throbbing musical background. There was also a photo booth for amorous […]
My congratulations to Montecito film director Frederick Toye, 57, who has just received two of the movie industry’s highest awards at the 77th annual Directors Guild of America Awards at the Beverly Hilton. Frederick, whose mother is screenwriter (and MJ contributor) Sigrid Toye, received the Outstanding Directorial Achievements in a Dramatic Series Award and an […]
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Your Society Invites gal-Friday is pleased to share the 2025 Legacy Award Winners of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History (SBMNH), who were announced at a trés private soirée called the Leadership Circles of Giving Dinner held at the Fleischmann Auditorium. This year’s honorees are UCSB Professor Emeritus Michael Glassow, PhD; geologist John Powell, […]
The Ensemble Theatre Company’s presentation of a vastly entertaining new version of the Bard’s Hamlet, one of his best-known tragedies at the New Vic directed by Margaret Shigeko Starbuck, is not to be missed. The production is set in modern Denmark with Will Block playing the troubled titular character – with the Shakespearean text of […]
It was definitely a 90-minute production with a difference when Cirque Kalabanté performed at the Lobero, part of the popular UCSB Arts & Lectures series. The show, Afrique en Cirque, was created by Yamoussa Bangoura, a multidisciplinary artist of Guinean origin, who eventually joined his country’s Circus Baobab touring Africa and Europe. In early 2000 […]
Former ballerina and photographer Jenna Reichental hosted a Palm Royale-themed belated birthday bash thrown by her husband Avi at their Toro Canyon Jenavi Vineyards for 80 guests. Oozing chic and elegance befitting a Palm Beach, Florida crowd, the boffo bash drew on the Apple+ TV series, starring Montecito comedienne Carol Burnett and high society in […]
Santa Barbara Maritime Museum, which celebrates its 25th anniversary next month, opened its first exhibition of the year – Above Your Dreams by local artist Kevin A. Short, which runs through May 11. The colorful exhibit of more than 40 oil paintings showcases Short’s deftness at capturing fleeting beauty and the power of sunlight through […]
What excellent timing! The Belmond El Encanto just launched a cinematic speaker series which happily coincided with the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. The series featured Ojai-based scriptwriter and producer Stephen Cornwell, son of prolific spy novelist David Cornwell, who used the pseudonym John le Carré when he wrote such bestsellers as The Spy Who […]
On a personal note, I remember Karim Aga Khan, who just died at his estate in Portugal at the age of 88. The vastly rich religious head of the Ismaili sect of Islam, which has as many as 15 million members, he inherited his title from his grandfather in 1957, aged just 20, and was […]
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Last Sunday night, actor Clarence Maclin spoke to a sold-out Arlington Theatre audience at SBIFF’s Virtuosos Awards about why he had spent years co-writing and then acting in Sing Sing, the feature film up for Best Picture at next month’s Academy Awards. The movie depicts his earlier life, when he was sentenced to 17 years […]
For the first time since being established in 1951, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art Women’s Board (SBMAWB) is now fully DEI with its first men members introduced alongside new women members at its annual January Luncheon. I attended the luncheon held on Thursday, January 23, at the University Club. Presiding was SBMAWB President, Paula […]
Your trusty Society reporter is here with the new board members appointed to your favorite nonprofits. The Music Academy of the West, now in its 78th season, has three new officers and four new members appointed to its Board of Directors. The new Board Officers are Board Chair Danner Schefler, Vice Chair Susan Lichtenstein,and Secretary […]
It was an evening of many facets at the Music Academy of the West when it hosted a Denk, Denim and Diamonds gala which attracted more than 100 guests and raised around $50,000 for the Miraflores oceanside campus. Drinks on the terrace outside Lehmann Hall kicked off the sunset soirée before supporters filed into the […]
It was all too heavenly for words when Dean Wilson, head honcho of the Turner Foundation, celebrated his half century at Valinor, the former St. Mary’s Seminary which sold for $7.618 million in December 2022, and is now a 35.69-acre retreat center, a tiara’s toss from the Santa Barbara Botanical Gardens. More than 140 guests […]
