The good news us that there will be a generous supply of “bleeding edge” activities this week. The bad news is that, during the weekend when most people have the most flexibility in going out to concerts, three of them will overlap. Therefore, this week it will make sense to begin by sorting out this coming Saturday, summarizing the other activities in the sequel.
First of all, by way of a “warm-up” for the evening, the Noisebridge “hackerspace for technical-creative projects, doocratically run by our members” will offer its next two-hour GODWAFFLE NOISE PANCAKES luncheon event, at which vegan pancakes are served while selected “Noisebands” perform. Music for this weekend’s installment will be provided by SLUSSER, Antimatter, Fletcher Pratt, FSLUX, and Fognozzle. (In the tradition of Sesame Street, most of this weekend’s music will be brought to you by the letter “F.”) As always, this will be a two-hour event beginning at noon on Saturday, November 14. The Noisebridge hackerspace is located at 2169 Mission Street, two blocks south of the BART station at 16th Street.
This will be followed by three evening events, all taking place at the same time in different parts of San Francisco. In NEMIZ (the North East Mission Industrial Zone), the Royce Gallery will resume concerts in Pamela Z’s ROOM Series. This will be the first of two evenings of duets, each of which will feature four Bay Area creative musicians, concluding with an improvised tutti finale. The participating musicians will be Lisa Mezzacappa (bass), Amy X Neuberg (voice), Jorge Bachmann (electronics), and Teddy Rankin-Parker (cello). Pamela will join all four of them to make the finale an improvised quintet.
The performance will take place at 8 p.m. on Saturday, November 14. The Royce Gallery is located at 2901 Mariposa Street, between Harrison Street and Alabama Street. Tickets will $10. Because of the size of the space, seating will be limited; so advance purchase is highly recommended. Tickets may be acquired online through a Brown Paper Tickets event page, which has been set up also to allow the purchase of a “True Cost Ticket” for $15, a price that more closely represents the true cost of presenting this event. The second concert in this series will take place at the same location one week later, at 8 p.m. on November 21; and Pamela will be one of the duet performers, joining Crystal Pascucci (cello), Ken Ueno (voice), and Tim Perkis (electronics).
Over near Glen Canyon, Turquoise Yantra Grotto will be hosting its latest monthly house concert. The title for this month’s event is Music for Perpetual Motion. It will feature master woodworker and inventor Sung Kim, who has created evolutions of the hurdy-gurdy, which were displayed in the Window Gallery at the Center for New Music (C4NM) in conjunction with the annual Music for People and Thingamajigs Festival held at the beginning of October. To complement Kim’s performance, Paul Dresher will also be on hand for a performance of his “Hurdy Grande.” Finally, visitors to the Grotto will be able to wander through an installation of unique self-playing instruments created by Larnie Fox. This event will also begin at 8 p.m. on Saturday, November 14. The venue is located near Glen Canyon at 32 Turquoise Way, and admission is between $10 and $15.
Finally, C4NM itself will be hosting the fourth monthly installment in the Optical Sound series, curated by Tania Chen with film curator Benjamin Tinker. Once again there will be live instrumental accompaniment for the screening of a silent film. For this concert, the film will be a recent one, “New York Ghetto Fish Market 1903,” made by Ken Jacobs in 2006. It is based on archival footage of New York’s Lower East Side, shot by Thomas Edison in 1903. Jacobs then took an improvisational approach to digital manipulation of this source. Because those manipulations will involve throbbing light, however, his film should not be viewed by individuals with epilepsy or seizure disorders. Music will be provided by the trio of Bill Orcutt (guitar), Jacob Felix Heule (drums), and Danishta Rivero (voice and percussion).
This performance will also begin at 8 p.m. on Saturday, November 14. C4NM is located at 55 Taylor Street, about half a block north of where Golden Gate Avenue meets Market Street. General admission is $15, with a $10 rate for C4NM members. Tickets are available only at the door.
This will also be the next “double header” week for Outsound Presents with concerts in both the Luggage Store Creative (LSC) Music Series and the Static Illusion Methodical Madness (SIMM) Series:
- LSC, Thursday, November 12, 8 p.m., Luggage Store Gallery: This will follow the usual format of two sets of free improvisation, each running somewhat less than an hour. The first set will be taken by the New False Gods combo, whose members are Doug Lynner (synthesizer), Eli Pontecorvo (bass), Jack Hertz (percussion), R Duck (guitar), and Tom Djll (trumpet), They will be followed by a solo improvisation by Charles Xavier (the XMan) performing on a MIDI mallet instrument, a Yamaha MX49 synthesizer, acoustic percussive toys, and a variety of units providing digital sound effects. The Luggage Store Gallery is located at 1007 Market Street. As always, admission will be on a sliding scale between $6 and $15.
- SIMM, Sunday, October 25, 7:30 p.m., Musicians Union Hall: This will be a performance to celebrate the 70th birthday of Heikki Koskinen, featuring his ensemble Northern Winds & Voices. In this group Koskinen plays piano, electric trumpet, tenor recorder, and kantele, a Finnish variant on the dulcimer and zither families. The vocalist for the ensemble is Kati Pienimäki Schenker. The other instrumentalists are Steve Heckman (saxophones, flutes, and clarinets), Rent Romus (saxophones, flutes, and kantele), and Noah Schenker (bass). The Musicians Union Hall is located at 116 Ninth Street near the corner of Mission Street. Admission will again be on a sliding scale, this time between $10 and $15.
Finally, because this coming Friday is the second Friday of the month, C4NM will be hosting the next Switchboard Presents split bill of performers associated with the annual Switchboard Music Festival, past, present, and future. The first set will feature MaryClare Brzytwa performing music for flute and electronics. She will be followed by a new trio bringing cellist Pascucci together with Jordan Glenn on drums and Mark Clifford on vibraphone. This performance will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, November 13. General admission is again $15, with a $10 rate for C4NM members. Tickets are available at the door or may be purchased online at an Eventbrite event page.
