Friday, November 2, 2018

Outsound Presents to Honor Beat Poet ruth weiss

Recent photograph of Ruth Weiss from a poster for The Beat Museum (from the Facebook Event Web page for her performance)

I first encountered beat poet ruth weiss (who insists on spelling her name in lower case as a protest against “law and order”) in July of 2014 at the thirteenth annual Outsound New Music Summit. This annual summer festival in the Concert Hall of the Community Music Center in the Mission began its concert series with a program entitled PoetryFreqs suggesting the synthesis of the recitation of poems with electronic sonorities (frequencies). weiss was born in 1928, but her Wikipedia page does not give a specific date of birth. Details aside, this is her 90th anniversary year.

To honor the occasion Outsound Presents will offer a special program organized around weiss reading her poems. In true beat tradition her readings will be accompanied by improvised jazz. Once again electronics will be involved with Doug Lynner playing a synthesizer known as the Mystery Serge, one of the instruments based on the analog modular technology developed by Serge Tcherepnin. Lynner will be joined by Outsound Presents Executive Director Rent Romus on both saxophones and flutes, as well as Doug O’Connor on bass and Hal Davis playing log.

This special event will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, November 18 in the Musicians Union Hall. The venue is located at 116 9th Street, near the corner of Mission Street. General admission will be $20 with a $15 rate for seniors and a $10 rate for students. If purchased in advance through a Brown Paper Tickets event page, the respective prices will be $17, $13, and $8.50. The general admission and senior rates are “early bird” prices, which may change without notice closer to the date of the performance.

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