The woman walking onto the stage has presence. Walking, however, is hardly an adequate description of her movement-she glides, bobs, and swings her hips alluringly with each tiny step. She exudes an aura of command, each nudge forward rustling her brightly patterned skirt and demanding the attention of everyone present.
It’s never easy admitting you are wrong, especially to a stranger. In Jeff Baron’s play Visiting Mr. Green, an ambitious young New Yorker named Ross Gardiner hits an elderly Jewish pedestrian with his luxury car and as punishment, the court orders him to do community service by “visiting Mr. Green”
There’s something particularly civilized about attending a chamber music concert mid afternoon, a privilege Camerata Pacifica provides in its ongoing lunchtime series-usually abbreviated, informal versions of the same evening’s performance.
When the four members of the Juilliard String Quartet took the stage last Friday night, they didn’t say a word, barely acknowledging the presence of the audience. They huddled together and buried their faces in the music, glancing at each other only occasionally.
COLD CUTS: Though their Cinderella march through NBC’s StarTomorrow-a Web-based American Idol spin-off-ended far too soon, the Kings of Spain are back by popular demand, live at the Cold Spring Tavern this Friday, November 24.
AZZ CUBANA IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: In the past several years, Santa Barbara has had fair exposure to the Cuban-jazz pulse, and “pulse” is the right word. Jazz has benefited, directly and otherwise, from rolling, sensuous Cuban rhythmic influences for decades, and Cuban musicians have likewise found ways to feed the North American influence back into their own recipes.
Subscribers to Sings Like Hell expect nothing less than the best from programmer Peggy Jones, and she delivered with this double bill, offering two underground sensations at different but complementary stages of their respective careers.
Standing before an audience of mostly twenty-somethings-an age group that would have been toddling at the time of the Dead Kennedys, which officially broke up in 1986-former frontman Jello Biafra gave a big thanks to those who attended his show in lieu of watching “Lost or Survivor or whatever else is on at eight o’clock on a Sunday.”
People danced in their seats and the aisles for most of the night at this concert, a rare local appearance by a Top 40 soul artist. Standing or sitting, the crowd showed their love for these singers by keeping up a steady stream of squeals from the girls and encouragement from the guys.
If a city is defined by its bustling streets and the streets are, in part, defined by the people who tread them, then street performers-who spend more hours pounding the pavement than the average passerby-are central to a city’s identity.
