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Poetry and Music at Headlands Center for the Arts

Another weekend, another show planned. This time poetry with musical accompaniment. The Headlands Center for the Arts is not far from the location of this week’s Wordless Wednesday photo.

Sunday, April 17 · 3:30pm – 4:00pm
Headlands Center for the Arts, Main Building
2nd Floor, East Wing, 944 Barry

Maw Shein Win will be reading poetry with musical accompaniment by Amar Chaudhary for the Headlands Center for the Arts Spring Open House in Marin on Sunday, April 17. Under the title “Pitta of the Mind”, the duo will combine poetry with a mixture of electronic, ambient and pop-infused music.

The Open House is from noon-5PM. The performance is 3:30-4PM. Arrive early to get good seats.
Admission FREE

Unlike a museum, gallery, or theater showing finished works of art, Headlands Center for the Arts supports the creative process. Come discover how a composer composes, what inspires a playwright, and how a painter decides when to put down her brush. Visit studios of more than 40 local and international artists working across artistic disciplines, explore our historic, renovated military buildings, and enjoy a homemade lunch in our Mess Hall Café.

More info:
http://www.headlands.org/event_detail.asp?key=20&eventkey=958

Directions:
http://www.headlands.org/article.asp?key=23

Open Studios tonight

After much work and excessive anticipatory blog posts and tweets, Spring Open Studios starts tonight! If I can, I will try and live tweet @catsynth wish hashtag #sfopenstudios. It will be interesting to experience an art event from the point of view of a presenter rather than a viewer.

Here is one more picture of installation in progress:

This is a separate wall from those I showed in this previous post. I felt it was a bit unbalanced, so I added one more piece to the upper left, directly above the large picture. One of the many countless details I have dealt with incrementally over the process. The biggest challenge has been taking what was essentially purely digital and changing it into physical objects. It’s one thing to post a photo every Wednesday, it’s another to print, matte, frame and hang it.

One of the things I am interested in seeing tonight is how the experience differs from music, and from the performing arts in general.

Weekend Cat Blogging #303: Red Stripe

Our busy schedule here at CatSynth continues unabated, with preparations for a second photo event in a couple of weeks and a new music project that requires quite a bit of practice.  Yesterday, instead of the usual Saturday morning Weekend Cat Blogging, I pulled off the cover of the Nord Stage keyboard to practice, and dropped the distinctive red dust cover (everything related to Nord keyboards is bright red) on the edge of Luna’s beanbag.  But that didn’t in anyway discourage her in anyway from curling up to take a nap – indeed, the dust cover almost looks like a brightly colored blanket.

It’s amazing how Luna can nap through just about any type of music.  This morning it was songs by the Cardiacs – a little different than our usual fare, but fun and challenging. You can get a taste for what this sounds like (and what Luna is putting up with) below:

Then again, it can’t be more challenging than some the very artificial experimental sounds that she hears living here.

Weekend Cat Blogging #303 is hosted by Kashim, Othello and Salome at PaulChens FoodBlog?!

The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted today by Billy SweetFeets.

And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Upcoming Photo Show

As casually mentioned on a recent post, I have an photo show coming up next week here in San Francisco. Here is the formal info:

Tuesday, March 22 at 4:00pm – April 22 at 1:00pm
Philz Coffee
4023 18th St
San Francisco, CA

Solo show of photographs by Amar Chaudhary on the wall of Philz Coffee in the Castro. The theme centers on graffiti and urban scenes from the Bay Area, New York and Shanghai.

The photos go up on Tuesday March 22. No formal opening per se, but I do expect to be there in the afternoon and evening if you’d like to drop by!

They will remain up for about the month during regular business hours thereafter (6AM-8:30PM weekdays, 7AM-8:30PM weekends).

It’s going to be relatively small, about 8 pieces.  At least half of them have appeared in small form on this site over the past couple of years.

Weekend Cat Blogging 301: A Sad Day

March 11 was a sad day.

It is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our friend Mickey.

As mentioned earlier this week, he fell very ill and passed away on Friday. He (through his mom) first visited us in late 2007, and they have been regulars on our site ever since, as likely to comment on experimental music shows and photography as Luna’s feline antics. And in turn, we enjoyed getting to know them better through their site. Our thoughts go out to Mom Nancy and the rest of the family today.

We have been closely following the tragic events in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami. Images such as these are heartbreaking, and our thoughts are with the people of Japan right now. While every year brings multiple huge disasters, when it happens somewhere you have visited or affects people you know, it hits harder.

Our friends at Cats of Wildcat Woods have compiled a list of relief organizations. The Red Cross is always a good place to start, and now you can donate via text messages.

There is no information currently on Tashirojima, or “Cat Island”, which is off the eastern coast of Japan in Miyagi Prefecture, near epicenter of the earthquake and tsunami, but the fear is that the island was lost.

Weekend Cat Blogging #301 is hosted by Pam at Sidewalk Shoes.

The Carnival of the Cats will be up this Sunday at Two Little Cavaliers.

And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.

Weekend Cat Blogging #300: Return to Normal

Luna looks on at the jumble of furniture, on which the dotara is sitting post performance.  I actually like the geometric formation of the tables pushed together during the construction, and the contrast of the curved musical instrument.

The big concert is now over and done. It mostly went quite beautifully, except for one technical flaw that disrupted the final piece (more on this in a later post).  The construction is also now done.  So we are looking forward to life at home returning to normal.

We now have the time and opportunity to put the apartment back together, and do those mundane but necessarily things that make up normal life. Oh, and to relax and enjoy a little down time.  At least until the next big creative project begins.  I think we will be starting on Tuesday.

Weekend Cat Blogging #300 is hosted by Mog and Meowza at Mind of Mog. Like us, they seem a bit dazed.

The Carnival of the Cats will be hosted tomorrow by Nikita and Elivra at Meowsings of an Opinionated Pussycat.

And the Friday Ark is at the modulator.