The Santa Barbara Choral Society (SBCS) will time travel to the era of its 1948 founding for a night of celebration, music, food and ’40s fun Saturday, May 19, at Rockwood Woman’s Club.
Playing on the theme of “Sentimental Journey,” conductor JoAnne Wasserman will lead the SBCS chorus in a concert of Broadway favorites and standards from the 1940s. Post concert, guests can enjoy wine and retro cocktails, a cornucopia of canapés, coffee and dessert bar, dancing.
There will be live and silent auctions of vacation stays and themed items, offered for bid by KEYT celebrities Kesley Gerckens and Joe Buttitta, travel veterans themselves as winners of television’s Amazing Race.
The “Sentimental Journey” theme revisits a post-war era of economic stability and prosperity that saw the rise of the American Broadway musical and the Big Band sound.
Guests will be treated to both in this night of Cocktails and Canapés at The Copa! — a la New York’s iconic Copacabana, where ringside tables will beckon patrons onto the dance floor for a spin to the big band sounds of the Les Rose Orchestra.
Vintage attire encouraged, but not required. Rummage grandma’s trunk for 1940s retro dresses, suits, hats and gloves, and perhaps a “String of Pearls.”
Tickets at $125 pr person for open seating, $148 for reserved seating, are available at sbchoral.org/current-season-tickets. Reserved patron tables for eight are $1,948. Call SBCS office, 965-6577, to reserve a table.
— Mary Dan Eades for the Santa Barbara Choral Society.