As El Carrillo Studios (pictured) approaches its September opening, the city Housing Authority is asking the community for donations to accessorize the apartments for the once homeless and near homeless, currently under construction at 315 West Carrillo Street. The Housing Authority is touting the $10 million project, designed by architects Brian Cearnal and Joseph Andrulaitis, as a prototype of very attractive, very high-density housing.
UNDER THE RADAR: Today (July 27) at 2 p.m., the Music Academy Young Artists present a free Community Concert in the auditorium of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. I don’t know the program-indeed, I don’t know the programs for any of the events I will discuss today-but I would guess that it will resemble those of the Picnic Concerts.
L.A., CA BLUES: Like all major cities in America, Los Angeles is teeming with complexities and contradictions, a place of excesses, vanities-especially vanities-deprivation, fragility, and high hopes. It’s as ripe a haven and incubator for the blues as any city, and it houses more high-flying blues musicians than it gets credit for. Much of this unsung blues culture rises out of neighborhoods on inner-city turf, in South Central and areas where suburbanites and show-biz kids fear to tread.
Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright, Nick Cave, and Bono star in a film directed by Lian Lunson.
Here are a few of the many disarming, ennobling aspects of the fine Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man, one of the better entries in the dubious “music film” genre: it’s a rare concert film in which songs are seen and heard en toto; it actually includes the introduction of the backing musicians; and it’s a film driven by word-power. Cohen’s profound (and playful) lyrics veritably jump and slither off the screen, and we’re reminded again of Cohen’s special place in the pantheon of poet/songwriters.
At Victoria Hall, Wednesday, July 19.
The lunchtime theater series at Victoria Hall, Theatrical Treats, features readings of well-known playwrights and new plays. The idea for this experience came to attorney and actor Jerold Oshinsky on a recent visit to New York City, where he experienced a similar presentation. In a collaborative effort with fellow Montecito resident Elaine Kendall, Oshinsky has brought the idea to Santa Barbara.
Eighty-two years ago a group of Santa Barbara businessmen gathered at the S.B. School of the Arts at 936 Santa Barbara Street. The purpose: to organize a city-wide festival to celebrate the opening of the new Lobero Theatre, scheduled for August 4, 1924. The group aimed to “appeal to the carnival spirit lurking in everyone and at the same time perpetuate Santa Barbara’s picturesque early-days atmosphere.” The organizers had grand plans to make the festival an annual affair that “will in time rival the celebrated New Orleans Mardi Gras or the Pasadena Carnival of Roses.” So was born Santa Barbara’s Old Spanish Days Fiesta.
One week after walking away from the bargaining table and declaring an impasse, the Police Officers Association agreed to mediation of their dispute with Santa Barbara city officials regarding contract negotiations. The police officers are demanding a 28 percent increasein both salary and benefitsspread throughout three years.
A Music Academy Young Artists performance. At Abravanel Hall, Thursday, July 20.
This Picnic Concert was a typical mix of stuff I had never heard and stuff I can’t live without. They began with Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Quintette en forme de choros, rather dazzlingly rendered by Melanie Lan§on (flute), Jamie Roberts (oboe), Todd Cope (clarinet), Matthew Lano (bassoon), and Seung-Bum Lim (horn).
The Ocean Futures Society-an organization that promotes the welfare and exploration of oceans worldwide-is asking the public to take the plunge and make a $3,000 tax-deductible payment to their organization in exchange for an ocean-exploring swim fin. The dive blade was designed by Bob Evans, owner of S.B.’s Force Fin, for Jean-Michel Cousteau’s Ocean Futures Dive Team and was recently seen in a number of Cousteau PBS specials, including Voyage to Kure, which inspired President George W. Bush to name the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands a national monument. Donations will fund educational programs, underwater research, and film projects. Email donation@forcefin.com.
