News-Press Cutting Columnists
Promises of more local coverage result in the release of five community columnists.
Year: 2006
Gamblin’ Man and Fiddlin’ Lady
Chip Taylor certainly knows a thing or two about chance. Early on in his songwriting career, two of his songs, “Wild Thing” and “Angel of the Morning,” fell into the respective hands of The Troggs and Merrilee Rush and dominated the contemporary airways.
All the World Is a Stage
Sweet are the uses of the wine country on a summer evening. Seated on the sprawling, sloped lawn of the Fess Parker Winery, the audience for As You Like It shared space with actors who transported them into the fairytale world of the Forest of Arden.
A Bad Man’s Story
o the strains of Gavin Bryars’s melancholy composition “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet,” Conor Lovett takes the stage at the Rubicon alone, faced with holding the attention of an audience for more than an hour without props, jokes, or other actors.
Happy Ever After?
Putting on a musical is a significant project: the costumes, lighting, cast, music, and singing all combine to make it a formidable event. When it all works, it’s a magical experience. This summer, Y-NOT Student Productions took on the challenge for the second consecutive time with the Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods.
Stage Affair
UCSB’s Summer Theater Lab, a three-week forum in which theater artists from all over the country are invited to work with students and develop works for the stage, is like a summer fling: tender, experimental, poly-amorous, and thrilling. Each year approximately 100 individuals-actors, directors, playwrights, dancers, choreographers, and music composers-gather here to form a community, bounce ideas off one another, and create passionate works of theater.
Lullabies on Broadway
Clark Sayre is trucking into the plain Kahuna Burger but he will not touch the fries. “I know it’s ridiculous, but I want to drop at least a couple of pounds before this thing happens,” he laughed. This anticipated “thing” that Sayre-who teaches drama at Dos Pueblos High School-will shed weight for is a one-man show written by, starring, and, in some ways as a benefit for, Clark Sayre himself.
Cinderella Sweeping Up
he Music Academy of the West’s 2006 Summer Festival has now joined the foundation of the City of Rome, the Battle of Hastings, and the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Shakespeare’s “dark backward and abysm of time.” It is over.
Down to a Sunless Sea
Perhaps I am guilty of hyperbole, calling this concert “the best.” After all, this has been an extraordinary season of concerts at the Music Academy, and an extraordinary manifestation of the Festival Orchestra in particular.
Hearts in 7/5 Time
This long, rewarding concert opened with two of the movements of Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Opus 44 performed, with polish and sensitivity, by Karla Donehew and Jonathan Ong, violins; Sihua Zhang, viola; Matthew Zalkind, cello; and Han-Chien Lee, piano.
