Conductors can generate a lot of excitement around a concert, especially when they are as highly regarded (and as heavily hyped) as David Robertson, who will be at the Lobero Theatre on Saturday, June 30 to conduct the first of the Music Academy’s Festival Orchestra concerts.
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.
Jane Monheit, who was at SOhO for two nights last week, represents much of what is good and exciting about today’s vocal jazz renaissance. She is as comfortable singing in Portuguese as she is in English, and she takes pop songs to intimate, jazzy places. Her band, led by Michael Kanan on piano, is never less than fully alive and responsive, and her tone is crystalline.
Thomas Zika’s pictures of bathers currently on view at Edward Cella are an extension of the direction Cella took in the recent Davis Birks show, toward objects that read as though they belong to traditional genres-painting, photography-but on closer inspection, reveal that they have been crafted in ways that significantly complicate the categories.
Nothing says summer quite like theater under the stars, and there are a number of opportunities to experience drama al fresco in the next few months. PCPA will bring us a full summer season in the beautiful Solvang Theatre, including gems from Sondheim, Wilde, and Cole Porter, and the De la Guerra courtyard will resound with laughter when Shakespeare Santa Barbara puts on The Comedy of Errors.
The 1970s references in this production began before a word was uttered, not only with the period-perfect costumes, but with such details as the vintage answering machine that Robert (Colum Parke Morgan) listens to when he first appears on stage.
These internationally known concerts are going strong in their 61st year, and continue to attract a sophisticated audience to Ojai’s historic Libbey Bowl. Friday evening’s program was a perfect example of why this festival remains great: three incredible pieces of music, four pianos, six percussionists, one living (and conducting) composer-Peter Etvs-and, for the finale, four singers plus the Los Angeles Master Chorale.
On Thursday, June 21, three of our town’s most creative music ensembles will gather at Center Stage Theater for a concert, titled Songs for Africa, benefiting Direct Relief International (DRI), the Santa Barbara-based philanthropic organization that has been recognized as one of the most important and effective nongovernmental relief organizations in the world.
With its title taken from a line in a Sylvia Plath poem (“Tulips”) and a character’s dog named after Jack Kerouac, one might expect For Sheer Love of Me to be some kind of derivative, American-influenced postmodern trifle. Yet this excellent play, well directed by Mikko Viherjuuri and beautifully acted by the cast of four, is anything but a meta-fictional exercise.
Cursed with insight into the most egregious aspects of contemporary relationships, Neil LaBute has forged ahead with his new-fangled theater of cruelty to a degree that would have been hard to imagine when he started out a decade ago.
