A Pair of Interesting Choices for Tomorrow

Tomorrow will be a good day for non-standard concert programming. Furthermore, the two events that will break with many of the usual conventions will take place at different times, one in conjunction with lunch and the other after dinner. The result is that this will be a day on which the adventurous and curious will not have to worry about overlap.

The lunchtime event is the final Jazz Feast gig of the season. This is an intriguing series presented by the Common Grounds Arts Festival run by Intersection for the Arts, curated by Jazz in the Neighborhood, and sponsored by Off the Grid, the organization that brings multiple food trucks to a common location, allowing the hungry to mix and match courses for lunch or dinner, depending on the time of day. The basic idea is that the lunchtime setting provided by Off the Grid is an ideal location for listening to good jazz.

All of these events take place at the Minna Street Tunnel in SoMa, located between 5th Street and Mary Street. Tomorrow’s jazz performer will be Dillon Vado, who plays both drums and vibraphone. The first set will begin at 11 a.m., and Vado will be on hand until 2 p.m. There is no charge for the music, so money is required only for lunch.

In the evening composer Alden Jenks will present a “progress report” on his opera Afterworld. Until 2014 Jenks was on the Composition Faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) and was also Director of the Electronic Music Studio. Jenks wrote his own libretto for Afterworld, which basically turns Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein on its head, imagining a world in which robots create a human being. This past January West Edge Opera and the musicians of Earplay presented four scenes from this opera.

Tomorrow night Jenks will bring four more scenes to the SFCM Recital Hall. The program is expected to begin at 8 p.m. and should run for about two hours. No information about an admission charge has been announced. The scenes will be followed by Ceremonies for the Purification and Purgation of the Body Politik. This is a collaborative effort involving new works by Jenks, Tom Nunn, and Miranda F. Jones. SFCM is located at 50 Oak Street, a short walk from the Van Ness Muni Station.