Christina Waters

A remarkable piano meets Alexander Kobrin’s artistry, Ensemble Monterey opens an ambitious season, and local chamber ensembles offer more reasons to listen.

An afternoon under the spell of a world-traveled voice, with a collection of songs newly gathered and refined during a breathtaking personal odyssey. All...

Daniel Stewart’s adventurous Santa Cruz Symphony season pairs classical favorites with world premieres, unexpected collaborations and AI-assisted artwork that extends his vision beyond the concert stage.

Santa Cruz County’s Open Studios returns for its 41st year with more than 350 artists, three October weekends and a new mobile app. Christina Waters explores the studios, preview exhibits and wearable art of I.B. Bayo.

Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s The Last Five Years turns a five-year relationship inside out, with Chris Cherin and Charlotte Boyce Munson tracing love, ambition and heartbreak in opposite directions. Reviewed by Christina Waters.

Christina Waters reviews Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s stylish production of Noel Coward’s Private Lives, a glittering collision of romance, wit and marital warfare.

Derrick Lee Weeden delivers a thunderous, unforgettable performance as Troy Maxson in Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s production of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Fences.

Christina Waters takes aim at Sarah Hennies’ The Grain House, a world premiere that closed the Cabrillo Festival’s Defiant Dreams concert, arguing that sonic hostility overwhelmed musical imagination.