LeBrina Jackson (photo by Shamir Johnson)
“I’ve always just wanted to be the caregiver,” says the former high school cheerleader and beauty queen turned wellness entrepreneur and NFL wife. “The person who takes care of others. The one who makes them feel okay.”
Now, as the new year has arrived and minds focus on wellness and rejuvenation, she’s turned her instinct for providing services that refresh and renew into a stellar business. Her months-old Escape Spa in Cypress is an increasingly popular suburban outpost with an impressive roster of unique services, and a smiling staff of accomplished, hand-picked young therapists. It will officially celebrate its grand opening next month.
“Escape Spa is at the forefront of fostering a holistic approach to guests’ wellness and recovery by providing all-access resort-style amenities including a co-ed wet room where couples can relax together before and after their spa journey,” explains a rep for Escape in the press materials. Indeed, the strip-center setup is smart and polished, with lots of trendy bells and whistles — with many savvy couples and wellness aficionados already having found their way there. The extensive menu of services includes hydrotherapy, halotherapy, infrared sauna, contrast bathing and IV infusions, as well as luxurious body treatments, massages and facials.
Jackson has even devised a special package for the new year that gives guests an opportunity to enjoy a range of what Escape offers. The Ultimate Zen Escape comes with a hefty price tag — that’ll be $1,200, please — but, for spa lovers, the nearly five-hour experience may be hard to beat. The indulgence includes, in part, a Vichy body exfoliation treatment, a salt stone massage, tea service taken while wearing compression boots, a unique facial luxed up just for this package, a healing whiff of oxygen and, for sophisticated snacking, charcuterie and Champagne.
“We’ve been working on our Ultimate Zen Escape as a way to show off the all-encompassing Escape experience,” she says. “We’re so much more than just a spa; we’re a day destination, and it’s important to demonstrate that health and wellness goes far beyond the massage table.”
Multiple packages are designed for couples, usually beginning with a private jacuzzi soak. “Together in Bliss” includes both massages and facials.
Although Jackson is only 34, her knack for providing such clever, enticing services and succeeding as a businesswoman has been honed over many years, beginning with those popsicles. She followed that up with a stint in college, hoping to be a dentist. But when life threw her a curveball — an unplanned pregnancy — she changed her plans and, to earn a living for her and son Brinon, became a fifth-generation hair stylist working in her mom’s salon.
“I was good at it,” she says. But the then single mom wasn’t content to just do hair. She enhanced the experience with mimosas, cupcakes and, most effectively, friendly socializing. “I found that long after I finished someone’s hair, they lingered, wanting to continue talking as friends.”
When she wasn’t learning from her mom about the beauty biz, she enjoyed a passion for horses with her dad, a ranch hand who introduced her to the equestrian life as a toddler. She still rides and keeps horses at the Hockley, Texas, spread she shares with Brinon, now in high school, daughter Wynter, and her husband, former Cincinnati Bengals cornerback William Jackson, whom she wed in a lavish Napa Valley ceremony in July. (Baby Wynter arrived on horseback!)
“A horse reflects your mood and attitude back to you and helps make you more self-aware, a better leader,” says Jackson. “I realized on one of my meditative rides that I do care about everyone. I just want everyone to feel and be okay.”
For Jackson, opening a spa like Escape seemed like the logical next step in her career, sharing a bit of what she’s learned about looking good and feeling well with grateful customers — and building a successful business in the process. “To me, beauty starts from the inside out. It’s what you eat, how you think. What you do. How you help others.
And, she winks, “Pilates doesn’t hurt.”
William and LeBrina Jackson (photo by Shamir Johnson)
The entrepreneur wed football pro William Jackson in Napa last summer, with daughter Wynter and son Brinon looking on. (photo by Travis Daniels Photography)
The welcome desk at Escape Spa in Cypress
A couple in the water therapy room at Escape Spa
HaloIR Salt Sauna Suite at Escape Spa
Compression boot at Escape Spa
(photo by Robert Kusel)
Parsifal
Running on the HGO’s Brown Theater stage from Jan. 19 to Feb. 4, the elaborate production (there will be aerialists!) features tenor Russell Thomas as Parsifal, a wannabe knight who stumbles into a heroic quest to save a dying king and a dying land. With a voice Opera News describes as a “heroically shining tone of exceptional clarity and precision,” Thomas has brought leading roles of Verdi, Puccini, and Mozart to life at major, international venues, but this is the first time singing Parsifal.
The stellar cast includes bass Kwangchul Youn, making his HGO debut as the wise but stern knight Gurnemanz, soprano Elena Pankratova as the shapeshifting seductress Kundry, Butler Studio alumnus and bass-baritone Ryan McKinny as the Grail King Amfortas, and bass Andrea Silvestrelli as the malevolent magician Klingsor. John Caird directs, and HGO Principal Guest Conductor Eun Sun Kim will steer the ship for all five performances.
With a libretto inspired by the Grail myth, which first emerged in the 12th century, Parsifal tells the story of how its titular character — an innocent, perhaps even amoral youth — is transformed into a heroic knight and saves the world. (Not unlike Luke Skywalker in Star Wars or Neo in The Matrix.) Archetypes abound in Parsifal, but Thomas prefers to describe his role in down-to-earth terms.
“I don’t think he’s necessarily a bumbling idiot or fool,” says Thomas. “He was purposefully kept from experiencing things by his mother. She wanted to protect him, so she made sure he didn’t know he came from noble blood and didn’t know the world was a bad place.” In Act One, fate brings Parsifal to a sacred realm, where a brotherhood of knights mourns the suffering of the Grail King Amfortas, who is unable to heal from a ghastly wound inflicted upon him by the vengeful Klingsor. Drama ensues when Gernemanz sings of a prophecy that foretold Amfortas would one day be healed by “the innocent fool, made wise by compassion.” This is Parsifal’s cue, and at first, he can’t comprehend it. But in Act Three, 15 years after a frightening encounter with Klingsor and his flower maidens and the manipulative Kundry, the young fool reappears as a full-fledged knight, who can pluck a soaring spear out of the air and use it to heal Amfortas. How to convey such a transformation with the voice is the challenge Thomas is wrestling with. “Something has to change in the way the vocal color is presented to show a level of maturity,” says Thomas, who is 47. “So, I’m trying to figure that out in rehearsals. I don’t know if it will be successful, but we’ll see how it comes about.”
Alex Ross writes in his book, Wagnerism, that at the turn of the 20th century, Wagner inspired not only composers, but also “anarchists, occultists, feminists, and gay-rights pioneers” who saw him as “a kindred spirit.” Adolf Hitler was also an ardent admirer of Wagner and used the composer’s music to introduce his speeches, and soundtrack Nazi party rallies. Like many of his contemporaries, Wagner was an unrepentant anti-Semite and racist, and over time, some critics have interpreted Parsifal as a glorification of so-called racial purity. But for Thomas, who may be the first openly gay, Black man to sing the role of Parsifal with a major opera company, Wagner’s music has a life of its own and will resonate in unpredictable ways with new listeners, despite the composer’s seemingly unforgivable personal flaws.
“We can’t deny it,” says Thomas of Wagner’s views on race. “But we can make music mean whatever we want. We can make it a positive thing, or we can make it negative.” It’s also relevant to note that in Parsifal, compassion and empathy— sentiments completely at odds with Hitler and Nazi culture — are key to the healing of a suffering king and returning life to a barren land.
The fact that classical music and opera audiences respond positively (i.e. buy tickets and subscriptions) when a commitment to inclusivity is visible in concert halls and on opera stages is not lost on Thomas. As Artist in Residence at LA Opera, Thomas has commissioned new works by young Black composers and initiated programming to train high school students in LA county in voice, music theory, and movement, the goal being to prepare them to audition successfully for a conservatory if that is what they choose to do. He is also a founding member of the Black Leadership Arts Collective (B.L.A.C.), which is dedicated to empowering Black vocal artists through mentorship, training and financial support.
Thomas is also the proud father of a now nine-year-old adopted son. “He loves music,” says Thomas. “His first opera was The Magic Flute at the Metropolitan Opera, and he cried when it was over. He didn’t want it to end!” And at a performance of Turandot at the Bard Festival, seeing Thomas onstage for the first time prompted his son to scream out “Papa!” to the delight of the crowd. “The entire audience started laughing,” says Thomas.
Russell Thomas (photo by Fay Fox)
Parsifal
Parsifal
Parsifal
Parsifal
Parsifal