C ALENDAR OF Note to readers: This entertainment calendar is a subjective sampling of arts and other events taking place in the Santa Barbara area for the next week. It is by no means comprehensive. Be sure to read feature stories in each issue that complement the calendar. In order to be considered for inclusion in this calendar, information must be submitted no later than noon on the Wednesday eight days prior to publication date. Please send all news releases and digital artwork to slibowitz@yahoo.com)
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3 1st Thursday – Santa Barbara artists are all over State Street and environs map in galleries, retail shops, and elsewhere as the monthly art-walk style event turns its attention to our own town. Highlights include “Duct Tape Dreams” at Channing Peake Gallery, in which Joe Girandola visualizes the world’s greatest architectural wonders in duct tape. At Distinctive Art Gallery, “All Santa Barbara All The Time” boasts a collection of paintings made en plein air by artist Chris Potter, while Bella Rosa Galleries’s “Cosmic Encounters” features the whimsical back-illuminated paintings of Pali-X-Mano, best-known for his Solstice Parade inflatables. On the performing arts front, the Museum of Contemporary Art serves libations from The Bobcat Room amid a freestyle jam from DJ Jack Handy, DJ Beatnik, and El DJ Magneto, while Capoeira Sul da Bahia does its stunning Brazilian dance/ martial arts to live drumming at the corner of State & Anapamu streets, and Santa Barbara native David Segall (formerly Courtenay) plays his mix of soul, folk, reggae, and rock on themes of nature, surfing, sailing, and yoga at Marshalls Patio on the corner of Canon Perdido. WHEN: 5 to 8 pm WHERE: Lower State Street and environs COST: free INFO: www.santabarbaradowntown.com/ about/1st-thursday
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4 Collective Collaborative – Tracy Kofford, head of the SBCC Dance Department and a member of the Santa Barbara Dance Theater in residence at his alma mater of UCSB, has put together this showcase of new work from 14 area choreographers encompassing nine different companies including SBCC Dance
Company, UCSB Dance Company, SBFB, SB Dance Arts, LA Dance Moves, Shieldwall Dance Company, and many more. The show represents Kofford’s step forward in connecting the two colleges’ program, as well as collaborating with others as his own SBCC company moves toward touring. For many of the dancers, it will be their debut performance at Santa Barbara’s splendid historical theater. WHEN: 7 pm WHERE: Lobero Theatre, 33 East Canon Perdido St. COST: $25 in advance, $29 at the door INFO: 963-0761 or www.lobero.com
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5 Dance, Museum Style – “Dance to the Music of Time” is the theme for tonight’s Atelier, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s periodic evening of intimate, intriguing, and often irreverent interactions with art and artists in the museum’s galleries. Inspired by art from the museum’s current exhibitions British Art from Whistler to World War II and Cecil Beaton’s “London’s Honourable Scars”: Photographs of the Blitz, Atelier revisits London’s Bright Young Things, an era filled with cocktails, costumes, pranks, and treasure hunts that stopped traffic, when everything was “divine, darling” and simply too much. The activities include “After Midnight in Mayfair Scavenger Hunt” in which guests will go off in search of artist-designed clues through the galleries culminating in prizes and Polaroid portrait documenting victory. Tunes from the British Music Hall allow visitors to sing along to silly or sentimental piano favorites in Preston Morton Gallery performed by Sam Hobel, or dance to the retro rhythms of Ulysses Jasz on the museum’s front steps. In “Let Frivolity Reign”: The Country House Party Interactive Installation Atelier attendees can leave their mark on a lavish and theatrical country house party by creating a visual diary page, pairing the words of the Mitford
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3 Rhymin’ & Dust – Joan Baez returns to Santa Barbara for the first time since a concert at the Lobero in February 2009, when she was on the road in support of a Grammy-nominated album produced by Steve Earle. The legendary singer and activist has had 7½ more years to add fuel to her fires of protest – social, economical, and personal – that she has pursued and delivered with passion, purpose, and pure vocal beauty since the 1960s. Even at 75, there are new singer-songwriters to bring to wider attention, as she did for Bob Dylan back in 1963, and new causes to illuminate, as Baez’s current tour, which stops at the much-larger Arlington Theatre tonight, comes accompanied by the Innocence Project, the nonprofit that aims to free the unjustly convicted from prison. Even as the causes of concern accumulate, her gently trilling soprano voice remains as compelling as it ever was. WHEN: 8 pm WHERE: Arlington Theatre, 1317 State St. COST: $50-$75 INFO: 893-3535/www.ArtsAndLectures.UCSB.edu or 9634408/www.ticketmaster.com/venue/73731
50 MONTECITO JOURNAL
EVENTS by Steven Libowitz
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4 Penny for Your Thoughts – It’s easy to view Penny Nichols as one of a myriad of local singer-songwriters, as she’s based on the Central Coast. But truly, she’s a vast resource connected to the early days of the Folk Revival, a performer whose resumé includes appearing at the Big Sur Folk Festival during the famous “Summer of Love”, the same year she recorded her first album, Penny’s Arcade, for Buddha Records, the erstwhile label that marketed bubblegum pop (the Ohio Express and the 1910 Fruitgum Company), folk-rock (Melanie) and even Captain Beefheart. (Buddha showed up again in her career, in the 1990s CD Songs of the Jataka Tales based on thousand-year-old tales). Nichols’s voice can also be heard on Jimmy Buffett’s “Son of a Son of a Sailor” from 1977. More recently, Nichols – who still sporadically records – is known for producing the annual Central Coast songwriters conference SummerSongs. A local appearance in a coffeehouse environment is a rare treat. Opening is hVA, Stephanie Croff and Kyle Reilly’s duo weaving complex musical threads and tight vocal harmonies over songs celebrating the joys and hardships of love and living in ever-changing times. Series producer Roy Donkin accompanies on bass. WHEN: 7:30 pm WHERE: Cambridge Drive Community Church, 550 Cambridge Drive, Goleta COST: $12 with advance reservation and $15 at the door INFO: 964-0436 or www.cambridgedrivechurch.org sisters and Evelyn Waugh with stunning images by Beaton. Fancy dressing up is encouraged – maybe your Halloween costume fits the “aristocratic bohemian” oeuvre, or one the many extravagant theme parties of the ear (White, Mozart, Sailor, Impersonation) – and don’t forget your brittle wit. As always, the evening also includes carefully crafted passed hors d’oeuvres, wines, and signature cocktails. WHEN: 5:30 to 7:30 pm WHERE: 1130 State Street (entrance in the rear) COST: $30 general, $25 museum members INFO: 963-4364 or www.sbma.net Laugh it up – Local comedian and producer Kimmie Dee hosts a one-nightonly show starring some of the hottest standup comics and award-wining magicians from Los Angeles and New York. Performers include Andrew Goldenhersh, Darren Carter, David Deeble, Heather Pasternak, Jessica Keenan, John Dunn, Vargus Mason, and a big-name special guest, who between them have been appearing at The Magic Castle, the Comedy Store, Las Vegas showrooms, and on The Tonight Show, Conan, and Showtime comedy specials. This show inaugurates an anticipated annual tradition in Carpinteria historic theater. WHEN: 7 pm WHERE: Plaza Playhouse Theater, 4916 Carpinteria Avenue, Carpinteria COST: $25 general admission INFO: 684-6380 or www.plazatheatercarpinteria.com
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6 Poetry in the Plaza – The Santa Barbara Poetry Series – which presents a
• The Voice of the Village •
reading by visiting, local and student poets each quarter of the year – opens its new season with David Oliveira, George H.S. Singer, and Marisa Gutierrez. Oliveira, author of several collections and a founding editor of the national journal of poetry Solo who was also the millennium poet laureate of Santa Barbara, now lives in Phnom Penh, where he is a professor of English. Singer, who is a professor in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at UCSB, often uses his experience as a Buddhist monk as a young man and his efforts to carry on with mindfulness in our distracting world as a theme for his poems. Gutierrez is a third-year student at SBCC. Fellow former Santa Barbara poet laureate Chryss Yost serves as co-coordinator of the series. WHEN: 7 to 8:30 pm WHERE: The Cielito Room at Viva Modern Mexican Cuisine, 114 State Street in La Arcada Plaza COST: $10 general, $5 students & seniors INFO: 965-4770 or www. gunpowderpress.com
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 7 A Celebration of Joni Mitchell – That’s the theme of tonight’s concert and also the name of the band fronted by Kimberly Ford, the Santa Barbara-based jazz singer-guitarist and educator who has been a Joni Mitchell fan since her own coming-of-age years in the Central Valley, where she learned to sing using Mitchell’s soul-baring 1971 album Blue as a primer. Since creating the Mitchell tribute two years ago and debuting it at SOhO to pay tribute to Mitchell’s melding of progressive folk with elements of rock, jazz, and world
3 – 10 November 2016