Music for Food Fundraiser Tonight

This week’s Bleeding Edge column will be postponed for a day due to an overriding last-minute announcement. In 2010 GRAMMY award-winning violist Kim Kashkashian initiated the Music for Food program in Boston. This was conceived as a musician-led initiative for local hunger release. All concerts are given to raise resources and awareness in the fight against hunger, empowering all musicians wishing to use their artistry to further social justice. Since its inception, the program has spread across the United States to the benefit of food pantries not only in greater Boston are but also in such cities as Washington, Gaithersburg (in Maryland), New York, Philadelphia, and San Diego. At all of these venues, 100% of audience donations have done to support a local pantry.

Tonight the program will give its inaugural concert in San Francisco. The performers will be both faculty and students from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. The program will consist entirely of strings-only chamber music, beginning with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 515 quintet in C major and concluding with Johannes Brahms’ Opus 18 sextet in B-flat major. Between these two major classics, there will be a solo cello performance of Elliott Carter’s 1994 “Figment.” Performers will be as follows:

• violin: Ian Swensen, Maria van der Sloot, Alexandros Petrin, Samuel Weiser
• viola: Dimitri Murrath, Linda Numagami, Carly Scene
• cello: Bonnie Hampton, Peter Myers, Evan Kahn

This performance will begin tonight (Monday, December 11) at 7:30 p.m. The venue will be the McRoskey Mattress Company at 1687 Market Street, a short walk from the Van Ness Muni station. The suggested donation amount is $30 or at least $10 from students and seniors. All proceeds will benefit the dining room in the Tenderloin run by the St. Anthony Foundation.