Music at Manny’s

Manny’s describes itself as a “people powered and community focused meeting and learning place in the heart of San Francisco that combines a restaurant, political bookshop, and civic events space.” It is located at 3092 16th Street on the northeast corner of Valencia Street. As can probably be guessed, the venue is currently not open to the public.

Instead, Manny's is providing physical space for musicians who have been affected by the cancellation of events and the closure of venues following the COVID-19 pandemic. The result is the Manny’s Musical Sundays concert series, which provides Facebook Live broadcasts every Sunday at 5 p.m., featuring local musicians. There is no charge for attending these events, but each one has its own Eventbrite page through which donations may be made in multiples of $10. 100% of those proceeds will go to the participating musicians. For those that wish to be informed of the performers for these events, the best option is to follow Manny’s Facebook site.

Guitarist Lyle Sheffler (from his Eventbrite event page)

This coming Sunday will see a solo recital by classical guitarist Lyle Sheffler. After earning his Bachelor of Music degree from the Peabody Conservatory of Music, Sheffler matriculated at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, pursuing a Masters of Music degree through studies with Marc Teicholz and David Tanenbaum. Locally he has performed at The Freight and Salvage; but his touring schedule has taken him to Carnegie Hall, the Tilles Center for the Performing Arts at Long Island University, and the Hanoi Opera House.

(That last venue deserves a sidebar. Yes, Virginia, Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, has its own opera house. In was built between 1901 and 1911 when Vietnam was under French colonial administration. The French influence could not be more blatant, since the structure was modeled on the best-known opera house in Paris, the Palais Garnier:

2015 photograph of the Hanoi Opera House (by Nicolas Lannuzel, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license)

After Vietnam was divided, the opera house became the venue for plenary sessions of the Communist Party of Vietnam. By the time I began work in Singapore in 1991, Vietnam had been reunified; and my wife and I were fortunate enough to be in that part of the world when Vietnam was beginning to open up to tourism. During a visit to Hanoi in the early nineties, the site of the opera house hit me like a ton of bricks! Fortunately, a colleague of mine had arranged for me to meet the Director of the Hanoi Conservatory. We learned that there would be a fund-raising concert for the renovation of the Opera House, which we were able to attend. As a result, I had a chance to see the interior before renovation began but never had the occasion to return to Hanoi after that.)

Sheffler has not yet announced his program. However, the Apple Music Web site for his solo album Classical Guitar suggests that his repertoire is a broad one. It includes early works by John Dowland and Alonso Mudarra, as well as an arrangement by David Russell of a keyboard passacaglia by George Frideric Handel. There is also an arrangement by Andres Segovia of keyboard music by Isaac Albéniz; and the three-movement suite by Agustín Barrios, La Catedral (the cathedral), is performed in its entirety. The performance will begin this Sunday, July 12, at 5 p.m. and is expected to run for about 90 minutes. Eventbrite has created an event page through which donations may be made. The best way to find the streaming video will be through the Videos section of Manny’s Facebook Home Web page.