Monday, November 29, 2021

The Bleeding Edge: 11/29/2021

In the wake of the usual annual slowdown that takes place around the Thanksgiving Holiday and its four-day weekend, “bleeding edge” events will resume at the beginning of next month. As of this writing, there will be only two events, one of which is a livestream. The other will take place at the Community Music Center (CMC), which, in the past, has tended to limit its most adventurous content to hosting the annual Outsound Summit (last held in July of 2019 due to pandemic restrictions). Specifics are as follows:

Wednesday, December 1, 8 p.m.: Avant-garde guitarist Karl Evangelista had originally planned Unsolitary as a quarterly series of improvised music. However, as of this writing, following the launch of the series in November of 2020, there has been only one other Unsolitary program, which took place this past May. Continuing what now seems to be a semiannual series, Unsolitary III will take place this coming Wednesday, a little over a year since the series began. As usual, Evangelista will be one of the performers. Others include percussionists Kevin Corcoran and Suki O’Kane, Phillip Greenlief on saxophone, and Zachary James Watkins on both electronics and guitar. There will probably be both solo and ensemble sets, but specifics have not yet been finalized.

The program will be live-streamed through a YouTube Web page. There will be no charge for admission, but donations are warmly encouraged. All proceeds will be directed to Bay Area social causes, along with an ongoing fundraiser for the Milford Graves Memorial Fund. The simplest way in which to make a donation is through the Bandcamp Web page for Evangelista’s Grex duo. All digital albums may be purchased on a name-your-price basis; and proceeds will go to the support of both the Unsolitary series and the Graves Memorial.

Sunday, December 5, 7 p.m., Community Music Center: This will be a program of new sounds with original and familiar instruments shared by Anne Hege and Julie Herndon. Hege’s primarily offering will be excerpts from her first opera, The Furies: A Laptopera, which she scored for laptop orchestra and live vocalists. She will also perform works for her Tape Machine, a configuration of cassette recorders interconnected for live-looping. Herndon’s set will involve both an extended piano and a collection of electronic instruments, many of which are her own inventions. The performance will take place in the CMC Concert Hall, which is located at 544 Capp Street, between Mission Street and South Van Ness Avenue and between 20th Street and 21st Street. Admission will be $10 and $15, payable at the door.

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