Fall Arts Preview |
A New Era of Arts & Lectures Begins
UCSB Arts & Lectures, in Its First Season
After Visionary Director Celesta Billeci’s Retirement,
Comes Out Swinging
By Josef Woodard | September 25, 2025
Read more of the 2025 Fall Arts Preview.
Another fall arts season is upon us, and Santa Barbara once again embarks on her thankfully familiar embarrassment of riches, in terms of cultural options and calendar-marking enticements. Many of those enticements have routinely been made manifest through the aegis of the bold and reliably inspiring programming of UCSB Arts & Lectures (A&L), which is undergoing a major shift this season.
Longtime executive director Celesta Billeci, rightfully credited for building up the offerings into one of the strongest university-based cultural programs in the nation over the course of 25 years on the front lines, has retired. She’s gone, but neither forgotten or “left the building.” The upcoming season was curated by her, and she will likely become an important consultant and ally going forward, while 20-year A&L veteran Meghan Bush takes over the director reins as then new “Miller McCune Executive Director.”
In June at the swanky Montecito Club, during the traditional big “season reveal” celebration for patrons and other A&L-connected folks, Billeci humbly accepted her props and kudos, including official pronouncements and a government-issued commemorative plate by Congressmember Salud Carbajal.
Billeci deflected the praises, telling the all-important patrons, “You bought into the vision of this program, and you make it possible.” But the A&L board co-chair Patty MacFarlane took the podium and twisted the spotlight back on the toasted one: “Celesta is a force of nature, a catalyst for building this nationally known program.”
The show must go, and is going, on, with another stellar array of world-class artists in music and dance and a lecture series chockablock with important speakers and contemporary thinkers. Looking over the autumnal musical offerings in the 2025-26 A&L season, attention has been duly paid to the importance of thinking diversely, appealing to varied demographic tastes. Classical, jazz, Americana, roots music, Mexicana, and Disney-ana, not to mention Hawaiian-a, are accounted for.
In effect, the list kicks off with two young superstars in the making, in their respective fields. Launching the season on a sublime pianistic note, the genuinely transcendent and virtuosic Russian wonder Daniil Trifonov — an audience favorite here — returns for his third time to UCSB, with a program of Russian music and Schumann’s Piano Sonata No. 1, on September 30 in Campbell Hall.
The following week (Oct. 2) at The Granada Theatre, Santa Barbara is again treated to one of the fledgling sensations in the jazz singer domain, Samara Joy, who last appeared in a heartwarming Christmas program at the Granada in 2023. (See our interview with Joy here.)
In other classical news, another important and young-ish classical pianist of global repute, Víkingur Ólafsson — half of a dazzling duo recital with Yuja Wang last season — performs at Campbell Hall on October 22. His program leans mostly on the two Bs — Bach and Beethoven — with Schubert on the side. The legendary violinist Itzhak Perlman, a regular A&L visitor, brings his In the Fiddler’s House program to the Granada on October 30.
In terms of the Americana/roots end of the musical spectrum, the fall brings the power trio of I’m with Her (Sara Watkins, Aoife O’Donovan, and Sarah Jarosz) to Campbell Hall, on October 3 (See our interview with O’Donovan in this special section), and at Campbell on October 18, banjoist Noam Pikelny, of Punch Brothers fame, busts out on his own. Flat-picking and hot-singing newgrass wonder Molly Tuttle moves from last year’s Campbell Hall perch to the Arlington Theatre, December 7. In the roots-adjacent zone, ukulele wizard Jake Shimabukuro returns with a Christmas satchel, Holidays in Hawai‘i, on December 10 at the Arlington.
Lila Downs brings her healthy mix of Mexican and North American sound palettes to the Arlington Theatre on October 23, in a warm-up Día de Muertos celebration. From soul-gospel quarters come two veteran acts — the great gospel stalwarts Blind Boys of Alabama, with guest organist Cory Henry at Campbell Hall (Oct. 25), and blue-eyed soul master Boz Scaggs’s Rhythm Review 2025 at the Arlington (Oct. 21).
As for the Disney factor in the mix, last year’s popular all-ages live musical presentation of the film Encanto has paved the way for an encore, with the live-to-film showing of the animated hit Moana at the Arlington Theatre (Nov. 16). Consider it a family-friendly warm-up to Thanksgiving, with all the big-screen and live musician fixings.
A&L is back in Santa Barbara’s collective life, and not a moment too soon.
See artsandlectures.ucsb.edu for tickets and information.
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