At Timbers Supper Club, Saturday,
February 10. Shows through March 18.
The 1980s saw a proliferation of cabaret-scale satires of the Broadway musical. Viewed through the irreverent camp culture lens of the piano bar, musical comedy was a perfect point of departure for all kinds of madcap entertainments.
UCSB’s Arts & Lectures rewarded the faithful on Tuesday evening with a return concert by Bobby McFerrin, this time leading his extraordinary 12-voice choir, Voicestra. McFerrin is moving so fast right now that it’s hard to keep up with him. Of all the wonderful concerts I have attended in Santa Barbara in recent months, this one provoked the most outright disbelief from the audience. People left the theater actually asking each other, “How did they do that?” It was like a magic act.
Worn out from the S.B. Film Festival’s relentless party scene? Well, brace yourself, because there is now officially a festival season in Santa Barbara and we are smack in the middle of it. Beginning on Friday, February 9 and continuing through Sunday, February 18, the Santa Barbara Symphony will be sponsoring a guitar festival.
Michael Doucet has experienced a great journey of discovery of the history of American roots music. Born and raised in French-speaking Louisiana, Doucet, like many other young people, embraced rock early on and paradoxically did not discover his Cajun heritage until he left the country. As an American in England and Ireland in the early 1970s, Doucet met and played with such great neo-traditionalists as guitarist Richard Thompson and Scots fiddler Barry Dransfield. Their motivation sent him back home to Louisiana, where he began to form Cajun-influenced groups and research the early history of the music.
This all-Beethoven program featured Akira Eguchi, a young pianist trained at Juilliard, for the Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 19, and offered the orchestra an opportunity to show what it can do with the more Mozartean side of the world’s best-known classical composer. The opening piece was the Coriolan Overture, a fascinating and idiosyncratic work that juggles keys and tempos with abandon. The orchestra and Maestro Heiichiro Ohyama made the most of its buzzing pizzicatos and startling rests.
Itzhak Perlman, gloriously relaxed and confident on a rainy Saturday at Campbell Hall, played an extraordinary concert that reminded everyone present not only of how great live music can be, but also of the living connection with history that attending such performances gives us.
Charles Donelan relates the results of the Q&A with Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen. This online special features a full-length version of the talk. Donelan’s article ran in the Feb. 1, 2007 issue of The Independent.
This is a transcript of Charles Donelan’s interview with Helen Mirren. Charle’s full-length article ran in the January 25 issue of The Independent (Vol. 21, No. 54).
This is a transcript of Charles Donelan’s interview with Helen Mirren. Charle’s full-length article ran in the January 25 issue of The Independent (Vol. 21, No. 54).
If Helen Mirren, this year’s SBIFF
honoree for outstanding performance, also wins the 2007 Oscar for
best actress, it will be in no small measure due to what is surely
the year’s most peculiar action sequence.
