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Armed with a warm, soulful sound, the Grammy-winning and Emmy-nominated artist Gaby Moreno creates music that offers an intoxicating invitation into her musical world for English and Spanish speakers alike.

Since moving to Los Angeles from her native Guatemala, singer-songwriter-producer Gaby Moreno has released 9 albums, received her first Grammy award in 2024 for her project X Mí (Vol. 1) (Best Latin Pop Album, 2024), earned additional Grammy nominations for her albums Alegoría (Best Latin Rock or Alternative Album, 2023) and Illusion (Best Latin Pop Album, 2017), and has won two Latin Grammy Awards (Best New Artist, 2013 and Best Traditional Tropical Album, 2023). Moreno has shared the international stage with pop music luminaries such as Bono, Andrea Boccelli, Tracy Chapman, Ani DiFranco, Punch Brothers, Hugh Laurie, Buena Vista Social Club, Calexico, David Gray, and many more.

Through her various projects, Moreno has redefined Americana as the only prominent Latina in the genre today, opening the doors for other marginalized voices and transforming the landscape overall.

FOUR FREE PUBLIC PERFORMANCES
Thursday, November 6 | 7 PM | Carpinteria Vets Memorial Building
Friday, November 7 | 7 PM Isla Vista Elementary
Saturday, November 8 | 7 PM | Guadalupe City Hall
Sunday, November 9 | 6 PM | Marjorie Luke Theatre

For more information please visit:
https://artsandlectures.ucsb.edu/learn/viva-el-arte-de-santa-barbara/

Santa Barbara Symphony- An American in Paris
Saturday, April 18, 2026 | 7:30 PM
Sunday, April 19, 2025 | 3:00 PM
The Granada Theatre


Attend "Conversations with KUSC" with on-air personality Jennifer Miller Hammel
Saturday Pre-Concert Chat | 6:30-7:00 PM
Sunday Pre-Concert Chat | 2:00-2:30 PM

Gershwin’s jazzy musical postcard, An American in Paris, highlights this program of America’s masters as the nation turns 250. Alexi Kenny, acclaimed by The New York Times for virtuosity that is “breathless and often daring” plays Barber’s haunting Violin Concerto. Charles Ives’ vibrant Three Places in New England presents portraits of patriotism. And the inner glow of Jennifer Higdon’s Blue Cathedral will soothe long after its sumptuous sound fades to silence.

The Artists
Nir Kabaretti, Conductor
Alexi Kenney, Violin

Repertoire
IVES | Three Places in New England
BARBER | Violin Concerto
JENNIFER HIGDON | Blue Cathedral
GERSHWIN | An American in Paris

For more info and tickets, visit: https://thesymphony.org/concerts-events/orchestra-concerts/an-american-in-paris/

Santa Barbara Symphony- Mahler's Resurrection (SEASON FINALE)
Saturday, May 16, 2026 | 7:30 PM
Sunday, May 17, 2026 | 3:00 PM
The Granada Theatre

Attend "Conversations with KUSC" with on-air personality Jennifer Miller Hammel
Saturday Pre-Concert Chat | 6:30-7:00 PM
Sunday Pre-Concert Chat | 2:00-2:30 PM

A concert experience unlike any other. Nir Kabaretti leads the Santa Barbara Symphony, Santa Barbara Symphony Chorus, and soloists in Mahler’s monumental Symphony Number Two. The awe-inspiring “Resurrection” Symphony is a must-see concert event that will bring the 2025-26 season to a triumphant, roaring close!

The Artists
Nir Kabaretti, Conductor
Johanna Will, Soprano
Felicia Gavilanes, Mezzo-Soprano
Santa Barbara Symphony Chorus

Repertoire
MAHLER | Symphony No. 2 “Resurrection”

For more info and tickets, visit: https://thesymphony.org/concerts-events/orchestra-concerts/mahlers-resurrection/

SLOPOKE 2025: ART OF THE AMERICAN WEST
Get ready for the 15th annual SLOPOKE Art of the American West Exhibition and Sale, opening Friday, October 31st through Sunday November 2nd at 6 pm at the Octagon Barn Event Center in San Luis Obispo!
It’s Halloween weekend, and SLOPOKE is celebrating fifteen years of bringing together the best artists of the American West — painters, photographers, and sculptors from across California, Nevada, Colorado and Texas.
This year, 25 exceptional artists will showcase their unique visions of Western life — from realism to abstract — capturing the landscapes, animals, and people that define the spirit of the West.
Among the highlights, you’ll meet featured artist Derek Harrison of Santa Barbara, known for his soulful ranch scenes; William Wray, the Mad Magazine and Nickelodeon cartoonist turned acclaimed landscape painter; Steve Crawley of Texas, whose colorful, inventive work bridges fine art and digital design and Nancy Krause presenting her creative jewelry art for the second year.
Sculpture also takes center stage this year. Renowned sculptor Christopher Slatoff, Chair of Sculpture at the prestigious California Art Club, will demonstrate a clay model of a bronze work proposed for the people of Shell Beach — a rare opportunity to see a monumental artwork take shape. Joining him are sculptors Pat Roberts, Jim Stuckenberg, and Tom Peck, each bringing their own unique interpretations of Western form and spirit.
SLOPOKE opens Friday at 2 p.m. with an Opening Reception from 5:30 to 7:30, featuring music by Julie Beaver and the Rockin’ B’s Trio. Come in costume for a chance to win a prize! The show continues through Sunday, November 2nd.
Tickets are just $25 and include a keepsake SLOPOKE Art Book. Visit the-slopoke.com for tickets and hotel info.
🎨 SLOPOKE — Collect the Spirit of the West!

Bay Area–based artist Julia Goodman creates hand-formed paper sculptures from reused textiles, expanding the possibilities of handmade paper through a focus on sustainability, texture, and history. Drawing on the overlooked tradition of gathering rags for papermaking, she collects cotton bedding and t-shirts from family, friends, and thrift stores. These materials—embedded with traces of everyday life—bring forward the unseen labor of women and caretakers, past and present. Goodman tears and pulps the fabrics, forming and pressing them into shapes and textures that recall the moon, the imprint of her gripped hand, and the folds of bedsheets and t-shirts. Colors emerge directly from the original fabrics or by mixing together differently-colored fabrics—without dyes or pigments. In recent work, washes of watercolor respond to layered shapes and surfaces in her work.

For her exhibition at SLOMA, Goodman offers tactile, alternative ways to experience time. The wrapped sculpture An Unimaginable Unit of Time, begun in March 2020, marks the personal and collective passing of days during the pandemic. Each day, she formed an imprint of her grip in pulp along strips of torn bedsheets, resulting in a continuous line that ultimately stretched 0.95 miles. In Waning and Waxing, Goodman carves moon phases into large textured calendars, recording the eleven months she mourned her father and, years later, the nine and a half months of her pregnancy. Through handmade materials and labor-intensive rituals, Goodman’s work holds space for cycles of love and loss, connecting us to the rhythms of time.

Siji Krishnan’s paintings invite viewers into a world where memory, myth, and daily life intertwine. Working primarily on delicate rice paper, she builds up translucent layers of watercolor and oil to reveal figures, landscapes, and hidden details. Her images often feel dreamlike—ponds shimmering with light, grasses bending in the rain, or figures dissolving into their surroundings—suggesting the ways that identity, home, and belonging are shaped by both what we see and what lies beneath the surface.

The exhibition The Secret Place brings together recent works from Krishnan’s Los Angeles debut, alongside five new large paintings created in her studio in Kerala, India. In these new works, Krishnan replaces her more figurative elements with water, plants, and sky. The natural world of her home—backwaters, monsoon rains, and village ponds—becomes a central motif, a site of both refuge and transformation. Themes of fertility and motherhood, community, and renewal flow through her practice, informed by her experiences of raising a child and the shifting boundaries between self and environment.

Krishnan’s art asks us to look slowly and closely. Small details emerge—an animal, a flower petal, a shadow of a figure—like secrets discovered over time. Both intimate and expansive, her paintings transcend cultural and geographic boundaries, embodying the Upanishadic (ancient Indian sacred philosophical texts) philosophy vasudhaiva kutumbakam: “the world is one family.”

THRILLER 2025
Saturday, October 25th
Halloween Dance Party 2:00pm / Thriller Performance 3:00pm

Every year, World Dance for Humanity hosts Santa Barbara’s Thriller event, a FREE family-friendly dance party and performance. It's part of “Thrill the World,” a global event that happens each year on the Saturday before Halloween. On that day, about 100 dancing Zombies will rise up at the Courthouse Sunken Gardens, casting away inhibitions to create a SPOOKTACULAR community experience! All ages and abilities welcome!

Practices are ongoing!
Wednesdays 6:00pm, Oak Park Stage
Saturdays 9:45am, Beach (Chase Palm Park Soccer Field)

Thriller Info with PRACTICE VIDEOS: https://worlddanceforhumanity.org/thriller/

Through the experience of some who served, this course examines the US Agency for International Development, the greatest tool America ever had for doing great humanitarian good while building diplomatic goodwill. We’ll look at USAID projects as they changed lives around the world and increased America’s strategic influence. We’ll explore how taxpayer dollars spent were an investment in our security and will consider ways we might move forward following the dismantling of the agency.

Christine Sheckler’s 27-year USAID career included posts in Pakistan, Tbilisi/ Georgia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Lithuania, and Belarus. She served in Ebolaravaged Sierra Leone, wartime Iraq, and Egypt during the Arab Spring. Christine also worked in USAID’s Office of Civilian–Military Cooperation. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, she helped launch and oversaw USAID’s Civil Society programs throughout Russia and the former USSR. In earlier years, she followed her Peace Corps tour in Liberia with a four-month solo crossing of the Sahara Desert. She is co-chair of USAID Alumni Outreach and is a board member and immediate past president of World Affairs Council—San Diego.

Bee Bloeser lived in West Africa, the Middle East, and Native American nations supporting her husband’s global health work and in her own work in speech pathology. She is the author of the acclaimed historical memoir Vaccines & Bayonets: Fighting Smallpox in Africa amid Tribalism, Terror and the Cold War. This is her third VISTAS presentation.

Vistas Lifelong Learning provides intellectually stimulating courses to Santa Barbara area residents, covering topics in history, public policy, science, philosophy, and more. The organization is committed to enriching lives and fostering a vibrant community of curious minds.

Meet the founders of award-winning Catedral Mezcal and learn about how this small batch, artisanal mezcal is made in Oaxaca Mexico. Mezcal tasting and specialty cocktails made with Catedral Mezcal available for purchase. Limited edition Catedral Mezcal Cowboy Hats available.

Join guest artist Emily Adams as she helps you create a stylish and useful apron! Choose a bib apron or a half apron with the option to customize your pockets to hold gardening tools or cooking utensils. Join us for a tutorial from 5:00 to 5:30 p.m. if you have little or no experience using a sewing machine. All materials and tools are provided. Ages 13+.