Recent Stories

Hot Hot Heat Opens for Snow Patrol at the Bowl

One of the privileges of attending the big summer rock shows at the Bowl is getting a look at some of the hardest-working people in the music business-opening acts. Typically they are young, ambitious, and riding some considerable early success. The opening slot gigs are a chance to practice for the big day-coming soon-when everybody in the audience is there to see them. And, in the best cases, the urgency of the situation comes across in the performance, and you get the feeling that, for now at least, everything counts.

Angela Perko. At Sullivan Goss, An American Gallery.

In her second solo exhibition at Sullivan Goss, Angela Perko demonstrates that she has grown quietly into a position of preeminence among contemporary Santa Barbara painters who employ abstraction in their treatment of landscape. In dialogue with nature, her work glows with inner warmth, and the mirror of reflection yields to the lamp of imagination.

Frederick R. Sidon

Knighthoods don’t get bestowed every day in 21st-century California, so when they do, it’s time to celebrate. Fred Sidon has been a resident of Santa Barbara since he retired from strategic consulting in 1992, and in those 15 years, he has put his considerable talents and enormous energy behind a variety of cultural projects, including Opera Santa Barbara.

Gwen Stefani at the Santa Barbara Bowl

As Elvis Costello’s “Watching the Detectives” echoed through the Santa Barbara Bowl on Tuesday, dancers began to appear among the crowd. These were the Harajuku girls, Gwen Stefani’s roving entourage of breakdancing Japanese-style fetishists, and they signaled the imminent arrival of her holiness, the reigning queen of Orange County mall chic, the original hollaback girl.

Gove County String Quartet.

Gove County is a real string quartet, even if the leader, Jim Connolly, plays the bass, and the music is sometimes quite far from the traditional classical repertoire. Sunday’s performance included Kirsten Monke on viola, Sally Barr and Laura Hackstein on violins, and Anna Abbey on piano and vocals.

The Academy Festival Orchestra

The radiant smiles that broke out in the violin section during the third movement of John Adams’s piano concerto Century Rolls said it all. David Robertson and Orli Shaham delivered everything a young musician could hope for in a conductor and a soloist, respectively, as they led a rousing first orchestra concert of the academy season at the Lobero.

Summer Arts Classical Music Preview

Ask those who have attended the concerts and masterclasses of the Music Academy of the West faithfully for years what the best parts of the festival are and you are likely to get many different answers. Some love the picnic concerts, while others are devoted to the Tuesdays at 8 series. Masterclasses offer the higher level of pleasure that can accompany witnessing new musical inspiration strike. Whatever your taste, the academy’s extensive schedule of programs is bound to offer something to please you.

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