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Svetlana Smolina is described by LA Times as “an outstanding pianist with a luxuriant tone,” and by the New York Times as “mesmerizing and dynamic”. Svetlana has won several prestigious, international competitions, and is among “The Best Pianist of the 21st Century.”

She is inspired by the works of Bach Beethoven Schubert, Rachmaninoff, Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein, Maria Callas, Oscar Peterson, Art, Tantum, and Miles Davis.

“Uproarious! Get ready to giggle, chuckle and downright guffaw!” Splash Magazines

Renowned playwright Jerry Mayer turned 90 on September 5, 2021, his pen and wit sharp as ever. Currently developing his 11th play, he took time out to revisit the acclaimed musical he wrote with son Steve. Now, four performances of the Santa Monica Playhouse premiere of this brand-new incarnation of the riotous and poignant musical have been added, October 1-2 and November 5-6, just in time to celebrate Jerry’s 91st birthday and the one-year-anniversary of the musical with post-show refreshments and birthday cake at each performance!

"Heartfelt look at three married couples in their 60s and their personal and senior moment-induced tribulations." LA Times

From the hilarious Role Reversal Tango to the tongue-firmly-in-cheek tribute to the not-so-firm Upper Arms of the over 60s set, to the heart-wrenching Whatever Happened to Our Love Song, the Mayer team’s brilliance shines brightly on the trials and tribulations of “aging” - lovingly dissected, shredded, massaged and put back together again, through the eyes of three married couples – Jewish, Italian, Irish - who have known each other for over 35 years. It’s time for a renewal of vows. But much has changed…perhaps too much? Will all three couples make it to the altar again? Only time, and the Mayer team, will tell.

"That rare jewel in the theater, a musical comedy that deals in a witty and very entertaining way with love and marriage in middle age." Gardena Valley News

Helmed by Playhouse Artistic Director Chris DeCarlo (director of 9 of Mayer’s 10 plays to date), LIES features a stellar cast including Mayer production alumni Rachel Galper (A DeLUSIONAL Affair, Love and Politics, Turning Thirty), Kyle T. Heffner (Facts of Life, Seinfeld [Bizarro George], Mistakes Were Made, Sense8). Barbara Keegan (NCIS: Los Angeles, Saving Mr. Banks, Emmy-award winner, Almost Perfect), Evelyn Rudie (A Love Affair, Climax, AUDITION: The Musical), and DeCarlo (Author! Author! an evening with Sholom Aleichem, Moliere’s The Fools, Almost Perfect), with newcomer to the Mayer catalogue Tom Van Dyke (Razzle Dazzle, The Van Dyke Bros blues/rock band, The Naked Apes).

“Young and old alike will love this play…It's hard to remember an evening when I left the theatre with so much gaiety and wonderment." Senior Life

Set, Lights and Video design by James Cooper. Costumes by award-winning designer Ashley Hayes. Technical Director George J Vennes III. Video Consultant Fritz Davis.

“LIES” plays Saturdays at 7:00pm, Sunday matinees at 2:30pm, October 1-2 and November 5-6 only!

"This musical about three sixty something couples had this night's audience roaring."
Back Stage West

Santa Monica Playhouse programs are supported in part by generous grants from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, the City of Santa Monica and the Santa Monica Arts Commission, the Ahmanson Foundation, the Rotary Club Foundation, and Playhouse PALS.

Produced through special arrangement with Playscripts, Inc.

$35; Discounts for students, teachers, seniors, military past and present, groups of 8 or more; includes wine and birthday cake post-show reception.

For the second year in a row, Spanish teams Barcelona and Real Madrid paid the highest average salaries of any team in a major sport. But in India, cricketers fare better on average than NFL players.

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with TNT Sports sideline reporter and bracketology expert Andy Katz about final four predictions, championship X-factors and indelible moments from this year's bracket.

As part of its monthly lecture series, the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum is pleased to present Disaster at Devil’s Jaw, a new film about the Naval disaster at Honda Point. The film screening will take place at SBMM on Thursday, September 21, 2023 at 6:00 p.m. Producer and Director Lee Abbott will speak about the film, which is 115 minutes, while also sharing photographs and stories, and answering questions. The cost is free for SBMM Navigators Circle members; $10 for all other members; and $20 for the general public. SBMM members will enjoy a pre-lecture reception from 5:15-5:45 p.m. Space is limited; reservations are required.
Register at: https://bit.ly/Disaster-at-Devils-Jaw. Learn more about becoming a member here: https://sbmm.org/santa-barbara-maritime-museum-membership/.

“Honda is the largest tragedy that very few people know about,” said SBMM Executive Director Greg Gorga. “But while many mistakes were made, once wrecked on the rocks, our sailors displayed amazing acts of courage and bravery. And we have a lot of local connections to this disaster.”

Just up the California coast from Santa Barbara, north of Point Conception, there is a location known locally as Honda Point. To mariners, this area has been known as "the graveyard of the Pacific" and to 16th-century Spanish explorers it was known as "La quijada del diablo”.... the devil's jaw. It was here, 100 years ago this year, that the largest peacetime disaster of the U.S. Navy occurred on September 8, 1923.

On a cold moonless night, in thick coastal fog, 14 new ships of Destroyer Squadron 11 were sailing at a record pace from San Francisco to San Diego under radio silence and in close formation. The ships turned hard east into the Santa Barbara Channel - or so they thought. Seven destroyers, and 23 sailors were lost to the jagged shore. Was it human hubris? Natural phenomenon? Foreboding omens? This film is their story.

"I'd really like to thank Greg Gorga and SBMM for their incredible contributions to getting this film made and made right,” said Lee Abbott. “Greg's knowledge and introductions to key interviews was absolutely invaluable to the final quality of the film."

This event is generously sponsored by Marie L. Morrisroe.

Santa Barbara Permaculture Network participates in
2024 I Madonnari Chalk Art Festival
Come & Be Inspired!

Memorial Day Weekend: May 25 – 27
Free, 10am-6pm

Location: Old Mission Santa Barbara, 2201 Laguna St, SB, CA 93105


Join Santa Barbara Permaculture Network for our sponsored art square at the 38th Annual I Madonnari Chalk Art Festival that takes place every Memorial Day weekend at the Old Mission Santa Barbara. Sponsored by the Children’s Creative Project, Santa Barbara Permaculture Network began participating in 2020 with Nature inspired art squares, with themes that included beaver & wetlands; the amazing world of fungi; coastal kelp forests; & the biologically alive soils beneath our feet.

Our 2024 theme shares the work of ecological design pioneer John Todd and his “Living Machines” that work with nature using only sunlight, plants, & microorganisms to clean & restore waterways & oceans from toxic waste created by human activity. In 2023 John Todd was honored with the Santa Barbara Permaculture Network Eco Hero Award.

The I Madonnari Festival is special as it gives the public an opportunity to watch the artists in action, sometimes with a chance to talk with them. For the second year, local artist Kristen Sell will be the Santa Barbara Permaculture Network featured artist.

The festival also has music, food, and visitors from around the world attending, a chance meet new friends at the tables provided on the Mission lawn.

Our art square is usually located below the Old Mission steps, on the right side as you face the Mission. Hope to see you there!







Learn More:



FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE

https://www.facebook.com/events/816877973649398



RESOURCES:

2024 I Madonnari Chalk Art Festival

https://ccp.sbceo.org/about-the-festival

3rd Echo Hero Award John and Nancy Todd

https://www.sbpermaculture.org/events.html#event65

John and Nancy Todd

Ecological Design - John Todd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8IRbYerwxM

Ocean Arts

https://www.oceanarksint.org/

Kristin Sell Chalk Mural Artist

https://www.instagram.com/kriimadstensellsart

Soil Web Magic Mural MOVIE 2023 I Madonnari Chalk Art Festival

ttps://vimeo.com/836723101

Santa Barbara Permaculture Network

www.sbpermaculture.org ,https://www.facebook.com/sbpermaculture

Celebrated German soprano Sarah Maria Sun, considered among the foremost interpreters of contemporary music, makes her Camerata Pacifica debut in a semi-staged performance of Schoenberg’s groundbreaking masterwork Pierrot Lunaire, February 7-13, 2025, at four Southern California locations.

The performances are Friday, February 7, 7:00 pm, at Santa Barbara’s Music Academy of the West; Sunday, February 9, 3:00 pm, at Thousand Oaks’ Janet and Ray Scherr Forum; Tuesday, February 11, 7:30 pm, at The Huntington’s Rothenberg Hall in San Marino; and February 13, 8:00 pm, at Zipper Hall in Downtown Los Angeles.

Schoenberg set Pierrot Lunaire, commissioned in 1921 by actress/singer Albertina Zena, to 21 poems by the Belgian Symbolist poet Albert Giraud. With this piece, the self-taught composer who early in his career served as the musical director in a cabaret, contributed substantially, to the development of a new form of musical expression in which the sound of a word is transformed into an animalistic portrayal of sensual and spiritual movement, making it as important as the word’s meaning.

The program also features Schoenberg’s earlier atonal work Little Piano Piece, Op. 19, No. 6, as well as musical gems familiar and less familiar by three other composers whose lives and work were inextricably linked with Schoenberg in the early 20th century: Gershwin, Weill, and Debussy. They include Debussy’s Clair de Lune, Gershwin’s Prelude No. 2 in C Sharp Minor, and four Weill songs, among them “It Never Was You” from the musical Knickerbocker Holiday, later made into a film starring Nelson Eddy.

Lara Morciano’s virtuosic Embedded Tangles, composed in 2013 for flute and real-time electronics, opens the program with flutist extraordinaire Sébastian Jacot, who returns to Camerata Pacifica following his critically acclaimed West Coast recital debut with the international chamber collective last February.

Principal Cello Ani Aznavoorian, Principal Clarinet Jose Franch-Ballester, and Principal Piano Irina Zahharenkova are also joined by Jolente de Maeyer, one of Belgium’s leading violinists, who makes her Camerata Pacifica debut along with soprano Sarah Maria Sun.

For tickets ($75 at The Huntington, Music Academy of the West, and Zipper Hall; $91, including fees, at Janet and Ray Scherr Forum) and information, visit www.cameratapacifica.org.

Celebrated German soprano Sarah Maria Sun, considered among the foremost interpreters of contemporary music, makes her Camerata Pacifica debut in a semi-staged performance of Schoenberg’s groundbreaking masterwork Pierrot Lunaire, February 7-13, 2025, at four Southern California locations.

The performances are Friday, February 7, 7:00 pm, at Santa Barbara’s Music Academy of the West; Sunday, February 9, 3:00 pm, at Thousand Oaks’ Janet and Ray Scherr Forum; Tuesday, February 11, 7:30 pm, at The Huntington’s Rothenberg Hall in San Marino; and February 13, 8:00 pm, at Zipper Hall in Downtown Los Angeles.

Schoenberg set Pierrot Lunaire, commissioned in 1921 by actress/singer Albertina Zena, to 21 poems by the Belgian Symbolist poet Albert Giraud. With this piece, the self-taught composer who early in his career served as the musical director in a cabaret, contributed substantially, to the development of a new form of musical expression in which the sound of a word is transformed into an animalistic portrayal of sensual and spiritual movement, making it as important as the word’s meaning.

The program also features Schoenberg’s earlier atonal work Little Piano Piece, Op. 19, No. 6, as well as musical gems familiar and less familiar by three other composers whose lives and work were inextricably linked with Schoenberg in the early 20th century: Gershwin, Weill, and Debussy. They include Debussy’s Clair de Lune, Gershwin’s Prelude No. 2 in C Sharp Minor, and four Weill songs, among them “It Never Was You” from the musical Knickerbocker Holiday, later made into a film starring Nelson Eddy.

Lara Morciano’s virtuosic Embedded Tangles, composed in 2013 for flute and real-time electronics, opens the program with flutist extraordinaire Sébastian Jacot, who returns to Camerata Pacifica following his critically acclaimed West Coast recital debut with the international chamber collective last February.

Principal Cello Ani Aznavoorian, Principal Clarinet Jose Franch-Ballester, and Principal Piano Irina Zahharenkova are also joined by Jolente de Maeyer, one of Belgium’s leading violinists, who makes her Camerata Pacifica debut along with soprano Sarah Maria Sun.

For tickets ($75 at The Huntington, Music Academy of the West, and Zipper Hall; $91, including fees, at Janet and Ray Scherr Forum) and information, visit www.cameratapacifica.org.

The disconnect between Emil Bove's aggressive stance at the time to hold rioters accountable — and his current hostility toward the Jan. 6 probe — has troubled some former colleagues.

The year in television started with a bust — or to be more precise, a writer's strike — but Fresh Air's TV critic says there were plenty of TiVo-worthy programs in 2008. Prominent among them: AMC's Mad Men.