Steven Libowitz

Lights Up! Theatre Company is expanding its lighting grid and illuminating two new projects, all under the umbrella of what is known as one of Santa Barbara's teen theater conservatories. It all comes together in this month's SummerFest at Center Stage Theatre, the company's home since its founding in 2018, with three different events in the span of four days, August 12-16. First up is

Nathaniel Silberschlag , one of the early listings is a feature that ran in the New York Times back in 2022, when the horn player was all of 23, but already tenured as the principal horn with the Cleveland Orchestra, one of the country's most storied. He'd landed the prestigious position at 21 years old, securing a job he'd dreamed about since he was barely past toddler years.

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G race Fisher 's story has been shared frequently in Santa Barbara and beyond, but it bears repeating as it relates to her remarkable accomplishments and perseverance. The locally-raised Fisher was just about to graduate from high school and very active in a number of areas, including as a classically-trained multi-instrumentalist and dancer. But her goal of creating a career in music performance never even had a chance to materialize as she was suddenly struck with Acute Flaccid Myelitis, a rare, polio-like condition that affects the spinal cord, and in her case caused paralysis from the neck down at the age of 17.

Time was that the very venerable Santa Barbara Polo Club fielded 20-goal teams that competed in high-goal season, meaning the total handicap (a high number is better) could not exceed a total 20-goal rating among the four players. That's what allowed the then-consensus best player in the world

UCSB Theatre's long-standing new play development program Launch Pad moves off campus to downtown Santa Barbara for the first time for a special one-day only staged reading of two works-in-progress at the Ensemble Theatre Company's New Vic Theatre on August 27. It's the result of both a new one-year-old collaboration between ETC and Launch Pad and Director

Santa Barbara City College's School of Extended Learning – the latest name for the ever-changing but still beloved programming once known as Adult Ed – continues to offer literally hundreds of classes across a wide spectrum of fields, almost all of them at the ridiculously low price of absolutely free. But don't be fooled into thinking this is a case of you get what you pay for: SEL's instructors are nearly uniformly accomplished in their areas, often fully professional or otherwise experts, perhaps retired, or simply enamored with working with members of the community.

ory Pesaturo remains the youngest person to win the National Accordion Championships almost 25 years after he achieved the feat in 2002.

Santa Barbara Polo's high goal season comes to its conclusion with the final weekend of the U.S. Polo Association's Pacific Coast Open, the most prestigious tournament of the summer and one of the oldest as it got started a few years after the turn of the last century.

The old adage “write what you know” pretty much has not applied to John Romano . The East Coast scribe holds a Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Yale and spent the first years of his career teaching English at Columbia University, authoring a book on Charles Dickens Dickens and Reality and reviewing lit for The New York Times before heading west in his mid-30s. His first job in La La Land was member of the post-Steven Bochco staff of Hill Street Blues , hired by David Milch through their Yale connection.