Virtual reality pioneer and Santa Cruz resident Jaron Lanier is building custom composing software with AI, seeking greater artistic control as he writes music for pianist Serene and the Santa Cruz Symphony.
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.
Amber Williams first entered Janus as a 17-year-old mother struggling with addiction. More than two decades later, she leads the Santa Cruz County nonprofit as it celebrates 50 years and prepares for a major expansion in Watsonville.
World Elite Sumo brings its first West Coast tournament to Santa Cruz, with 12 international wrestlers, a new women’s competition and 400-pound Power Slap star Makini “Big Mak” Manu.
Jonathan Franzen looks back on 25 years of The Corrections, the Santa Cruz years that helped unlock the novel, his life with longtime partner and writer Kathy Chetkovich, and the coming Netflix adaptation starring Meryl Streep.
Poet, comedian and filmmaker Joshua Turek has drawn more than a billion views online. Now the Los Angeles transplant is building a new life—and publishing Notes of a New Dad—in Santa Cruz.
Richard Stockton traces how SpaceX launches, a new federal review of California’s coastal program and possible offshore oil leasing have converged into a larger fight over who controls California’s coast.
Santa Cruz’s Danny Wright believes rainwater harvesting could be the next solar. His nonprofit Gravity Water and startup Cloudwell are turning rooftops into clean-water infrastructure, from schools in Nepal and Vietnam to a vision for cities worldwide.
UC Santa Cruz students, faculty and staff are pushing back against steep parking fee increases they say will worsen an already difficult mix of high housing costs, long commutes and scarce campus parking.
Three decades after Jerry Garcia’s death, the Grateful Dead’s legacy keeps expanding through musicians, scholars, archivists and generations of Deadheads—with Santa Cruz still caught in the center of its psychedelic orbit.
After five years on call day and night, Ryan Masters looks back on the danger, trauma and consuming commitment of serving as a Zayante volunteer firefighter.
The Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music invites audiences to imagine a more expansive future through Philip Glass, Rita Dove, Leilehua Lanzilotti and other visionary artists.
