FRIENDLY FOLK: A Colorado resident with a history of sharing the stage with some of folk rock’s brightest, Michael Lille brings a certain credibility to his folk-rock stylings that most musicians would envy. Having opened for the likes of Bob Dylan, Warren Zevon, and Alison Krauss, Lille promises the kind of quality that has in the past led him to victory at the Kerrville New Folk Festival and the Telluride Troubadour Competition.
Elizabeth Short, the lovely brunette who in her short life dreamt about movie fame and, by extension, immortality, achieved her goal in the most unexpected way. With her gruesome murder, and especially the specter of her nude, bisected body in a vacant Los Angeles lot in 1947, she became a victim, an obsession, and a metaphor for what’s wrong with Hollywood and the world in general. She never knew what hit us.
At the Lobero Theatre, Saturday, September 16.
The opening night of State Street Ballet’s new season was a triumph. The dancers delivered beautifully in a bold, varied, and dazzling extravaganza. The selections ranged from serious to humorous, from nostalgic to cutting-edge, yet all shared a joyous celebration of Americana.
Embezzler Sentenced: An embezzler does far more damage than just sneak-stealing money. She can wreck businesses and turn victims’ lives into a nightmare.
Two seminal documents emerged from greater Goleta last week declaring that region’s determination to do battle against high-density development of any kind. On Wednesday, the Goleta City Council conducted its final public hearing on the city’s first general plan. On Saturday, the Goleta Visioning Committee, a county advisory group, unveiled GVC 20/20, which the committee hopes will serve as a blueprint for the unincorporated area east of the city.
On September 12, the New York City-based five-piece group TV on the Radio released its second full-length album Return to Cookie Mountain on Interscope Records. This was the band’s major-label debut, the would-be golden meal ticket for many emerging artists. Unfortunately, there were a few surprises along the way.
At Temple Beth Torah, Ventura, Sunday, September 17.
Few concerts of any kind achieve this level of interest and depth. The program followed a simple progression-a violin sonata followed by a cello sonata, capped by a trio for violin, cello, and piano. Yet nothing was obvious, or less than amazing, about either the music or its execution by violinist Catherine Leonard, cellist Ani Aznavoorian, and pianists Robert Thies and Warren Jones. Spanning the limits of the 19th century repertory from Beethoven and Schubert to Rachmaninoff, the concert brought listeners directly to a deeper understanding of the roots and sources of musical expression.
Maybe there is a fine line between hope and neurotic self-delusion. To me, they seem miles apart, but to the makers of this film, “never give up” means ignoring those you might hurt in the meantime. This handsomely animated film, which the late Christopher Reeve is credited with directing, echoes the mindset of a certain presidential administration. The story opens in the middle of Depression Brooklyn with a sandlot game being chosen up and our hero Yankee Irving being the last kid picked.
Barring the mass abduction by space aliens of Santa Barbara’s planning commission this Thursday afternoon, Cottage Health System will get a green light for its plans to build the biggest and most affordable housing development downtown Santa Barbara has seen in decades.
“I’m afraid I won’t live to see my youngest daughter’s children,” a friend lamented to me on the anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy. This was not out of concern for her health, but rather for the health of the planet-or, more accurately, for humanity. All a person needs to do to feel a sense of despair these days is turn on the news, open most newspapers, or log onto their homeÂ-page. We are constantly greeted with announcements of destruction, death, and societal and environmental degradation. But not everyone views our current situation as bleak and hopeless.
