ON the Beat | Music Academy Notes, On Campus and On the Town
Music Academy of the West carries forward, from gala to opera, with stops at Hahn Hall… and a pop-up church sighting.
Josef Woodard
Recent Stories
Review | Guitars, Wide-Brimmed Hats, and Hillbilly-ish Hipness
Dwight Yoakam, the veteran country artist with his own sense of twang, brought a heap of Kentucky-born, L.A.-basted music to the Bowl.
ON the Beat | Lofty Prospects in the Land of the Ampersand
UCSB Arts & Lectures is off and running for its 2025-26 season, as the retiring game-changer Celesta Billeci passes the director torch to Meghan Bush.
A Rake’s Digress
For its annual fully-staged opera this year, the Music Academy of the West fires up Mozart’s masterpiece ‘Don Giovanni’ at the Granada Theatre.
Home Invasion, Gone Global and Historical
Marcia Rickard’s exhibition “Gimme Shelter,” at the Architectural Foundation Gallery, deals with uprooted domesticity, from the local 1925 earthquake through wartime ravages in Aleppo and Gaza.
Vive le Cinéma Français
Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s annual midsummer’s French Wave Festival sweeps into the Riviera Theatre.
ON the Beat | Dive on the Hill on High, Academy Action in Motion
Lake Street Dive’s retro-modern R&B revue seizes the Bowl, Music Academy notes, organ-ic finery.
Film Review | Future Farmers of Canada, Under Siege
Canadian film “40 Acres” blends sci-fi/thriller angles with social commentary on Black life in the Americas.
ON the Beat | Sound Garden Meditation, Public Bacchanal, Pipeline Sublimity
The columnist leaps into the Solstice fray, sinks into a Lotusland escape, confesses pipe organ fandom.
Review | Takács Quartet, Formidable at 50
Celebrating its 50th anniversary, the acclaimed Takács Quartet kicks off Music Academy festival in grand style at the Lobero.
