Karen Lindell

The Ventura Music Festival has had great success with name-dropping. But not in the way you might think. The festival, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, has hosted some impressive names since its beginnings in 1995: Itzhak Perlman, Branford…

The ocean’s movement is languid and undulating. A flamenco dancer’s movement is precise and percussive. But both move with artistically fluid finesse. Flamenco dancer Savannah Fuentes is calling her latest show “Oceans.” And Ventura might have played…

“Equilibrium” is a deceptive word. It suggests equality, from the Latin root aequi at the beginning. But the key is balance, from the root libra at the end. Because to be in equilibrium, even though everything must be balanced, each element isn’t the…

Before you potentially dismiss TRAC 2019: The Representational Art Conference as an exercise in academic pretension (because you aren’t sure what “representational art” is, or whether you want to confer about it), let Michael Pearce put your fears to…

Before you potentially dismiss TRAC 2019: The Representational Art Conference as an exercise in academic pretension (because you aren’t sure what “representational art” is, or whether you want to confer about it), let Michael Pearce put your fears to…

The pins on Morgan James’ map to a music career mark some highly random stops, and she’s run into eclectic visitors along the way. Idaho. Modesto. Juilliard. Broadway. Nina Simone and John Mayer. Berry Gordy. Prince. And, yes, even Maroon 5’s “Maps”…

On the upbeat scale, Heartwurkz ranks higher than sunshine and rainbow glitter. The Ojai musical duo’s latest album is proof. There’s not a wisp of dark on Horizons, which is filled with buoyant, bright songs like “Rising Dawn,” “Rise in Love,” and…

In stark numbers, here’s what happens when a guitarist’s hand stops working: From 1988 to 1999, solo acoustic guitarist Billy McLaughlin played 1,763 concerts. From 1999 to 2006, when he lost function in his dominant guitar hand because of a…

Hey Blue, here is a song for you Ink on a pin Underneath the skin An empty space to fill in — Joni Mitchell, “Blue” A Joni Mitchell song gets under your skin in the most comforting way. When singer-guitarist Kimberly Ford was a teenager, Mitchell’s…

To understand the somewhat indefinable musical entity Human Host, let frontman and co-founder Mike Apichella explain the group’s name. It comes from an obscure 1967 U.K. psychedelic rock album by Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, Featuring the Human…

hat the world needs now: Ragtime covers of ‘Come on Eileen,’ etc.” And with that 2009 tweet from British author Neil Gaiman, people around the world first found out about what would become Postmodern Jukebox. Gaiman’s caption accompanied a video of…

“Summer Nights” from the movie Grease is a catchy, carefree pop hit about summer lovin’. Not in Judith Owen’s reimagining of the song, however. On her album redisCOVERed, Owen turns “Summer Nights” into a jazz-infused, torch-song heartbreaker. “It’s…

“Summer Nights” from the movie Grease is a catchy, carefree pop hit about summer lovin’. Not in Judith Owen’s reimagining of the song, however. On her album redisCOVERed, Owen turns “Summer Nights” into a jazz-infused, torch-song heartbreaker. “It’s…

Lyrics. Paint. Movement. Words. Thread. These are the welcoming arms of artivists. “Artivism,” a combination of “art” and “activism,” is more than a clever word mash-up. It’s a form of fierce but blusterless advocacy whose peaceful proponents use art…

Celestial and elegant, attached to an angel’s hip, the harp is an instrument of the ether. Until Ella Dawn Jenkins brings it right back down to earth. The Bay Area harpist, who prefers the name EllaHarp, or just Ella, did Debussy and the rest of the…

In Ventura’s The Aerial Studio, you’ll find young people twirling, twisting and swinging on silks, hoops and hammocks or bouncing off trampoline walls in preparation for a new spring production. These artistic fliers, along with professional…

“We are one world, one people. And we all breathe the same.” — from the song “Sisi Ni Moja” Take a deep, unified breath. And sing. “Sisi Ni Moja,” which means “We Are One” in Swahili, will be the signature song when the Fratelli Men’s Chorus performs…

Chris Hillman’s kitchen? Burned. His humility? Unscathed. Half of Hillman’s kitchen was destroyed during the recent Thomas Fire. But the Ventura hillsides resident, a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and accomplished solo artist who was also a member of…

A manger is the cradle of choice for the little Lord Jesus to lay down his sweet head. What that biblical baby bed is made of, however, can be the stuff of artistic imagination. Pencils, for instance. Jesus snoozing on a bed of yellow pencils,…