San Francisco
Wordless Wednesday: Industrial Oasis (Tulare Park)
San Francisco SPCA Holiday Windows, 2013
One of our favorite holiday traditions here in San Francisco is the window display at Macy’s flagship Union Square store featuring adoptable pets from the San Francisco SPCA.
There were quite a few kittens on display, some in windows that featured a theme of holidays in the city. Some really knew how to ham it up for the visitors, like this cutie:
They always get a good response from the public including numerous adoptions, which is of course what this event is all about. And we at CatSynth love seeing cats finding new homes.
You can find out more about the program at the SF SPCA’s website, including visiting hours and how to donate to help the city’s homeless pets. And if you live here or you’re visiting SF this holiday season, go downtown and see the cats in person!
Surplus 1980 and Fred Frith Trio, Brick and Mortar
A couple of weeks ago, Surplus 1980 joined the Fred Frith Trio at the Brick and Mortar in San Francisco from a night of energetic avant-rock and jazz. It was a show we have all been looking forward to for quite a while.
Surplus 1980 went on first, with a set that combined songs from our recent album Arterial Ends Here with older selections. In addition to Moe! Staiano and myself, the band includes Bill Wolter and Melne Murphy on guitar, Thomas Scandura on drums, and Steve Lew on bass.
[Photo by Michael Zelner.]
For this set, we expanded our Fred Frith cover “Cap the Knife” into a full medley featuring excerpts for some of his other songs. In a brief exchange back stage, it sounded like he appreciated the gesture, and even suggested that his group perform a “Moe! Staiano medley”, which would have been fun. But overall, it was our strongest performance as a band to date, with rhythms and phrasing much tighter as well as more sophisticated use of all parts.
After Surplus 1980 was done, Fred Frith took the stage with his trio that included Jordan Glenn on drums and Jason Hoopes on bass.
[Photo by Michael Zelner.]
It was quite a contrast, going from post-punk to avant-jazz. The trio played through longer pieces that moved between fast intricate sections and more familiar idioms with ease. The polyphonic sections were certainly impressive, but I do find when technically strong musicians play in unison or at least synchronous rhythms, it leaves a more memorable impression. Frith deftly filled up the otherwise sparse texture of the music, but not so much that one would get lost or overwhelmed.
Overall, it was a successful show, with a good turnout. Surplus 1980 is now looking forward to our next show in December, but I hope we get to play with the Fred Frith trio again.
Wordless Wednesday: Islais Creek
APAture 2013 Music Night
The 2013 APAture festival concluded with a diverse evening of music, ranging from avant-garde jazz to metal to rap. The event took place at SUB/Mission in San Francisco. Featured artist Karl Evangelista opened the evening with a group that included Francis Wong, Margaret Rei Scampavia, Cory Wright, and Jordan Glenn.
[© 2013 Karen Ng/Kearny Street Workshop]
The music was a frenetic style of avant-garde jazz, which moved freely in and out of more conventionally harmonic sections. Many of the pieces were inspired by Evangelista’s own personal history and his Filipino heritage. It was also fun to see Francis Wong, whom I usually encounter in more rarefied venues, at punk club in the Mission.
[© 2013 Karen Ng/Kearny Street Workshop]
The Evangelista group was followed by something completely different both sonically and visually. Bestiary, a solo project of Rai Yin Hsu featured experimental noise guitar and a rather unique black-and-white suit.
There were a variety of long sounds processed through effects, with a few sharper elements as well.
Some of the evening’s entertainment happened in between the official musical acts, with our hosts Rupert Carangal Estanislao and Jennifer Chu keeping the crowd energized.
[© 2013 Karen Ng/Kearny Street Workshop]
Next up was The Residuals, a self-described “hardworking, Do-It-Yourself metal band.”
[© 2013 Karen Ng/Kearny Street Workshop]
As expected, they were quite loud, and Joshua Lykkeberg provided vocal fry. But the group, which also featured brothers Anand Jobanputra and Rohan Jobanputra was quite tight, with unisons and fast syncopations.
From metal we then moved to rap, with a set by Joal Vargas that focused on community issues as well as his experience as a teacher.
[© 2013 Karen Ng/Kearny Street Workshop]
The diversity of the evening continued with a cabaret style performance by Bellows, featuring chanteuse Kyle Casey Chu and Rachel Waterhouse on keyboards.
[© 2013 Karen Ng/Kearny Street Workshop]
After the fast energy of the previous two sets, the mellow and expressive style was welcome, and their stage presence was a lot of fun.
Bellows was followed by Little Sister, an East Bay rock trio featuring Erica Benton, MonBon and Nada Diaz.
[© 2013 Karen Ng/Kearny Street Workshop]
They had a contemporary rock sound that was quite moody and a bit melancholy at times, but they still had a warm stage presence. Benton and MonBon traded off guitar and bass duties during the course of the performance.
There was still more music to come in this rather long event. I unfortunately had to depart after Little Sister, but glad I had the opportunity to be there for most of it and hear such a cross section of music in the Bay Area.
(For a review of the APAture opening-night event and gallery show, please visit this link.)
Wordless Wednesday: Pyramid and Contrasts
Robotspeak Modular Synth Meet
Last weekend, Robotspeak in San Francisco hosted a modular synth meet, with several manufacturers of synth modules on hand along with collectors and enthusiasts.
Eric Barbour of Metasonix was on hand, demonstrating his distinctive yellow tube-based modules, including a new spring reverb still in a pre-production phase.
I had the opportunity to try these out for myself. I particularly had fun with R-54 VCF, which I may have to get as a companion for my R-53.
[Photo by Edward Sharp.]
Another favorite, Make Noise, was also present. I was particularly impressed with the Phonogene – I had heard it before, but this demonstration made the power of the module more apparent.
I also finally saw and understood what the Wogglebug module does.
Pittsburgh Modular’s offerings were more down-to-earth, workhorse modules. They make an entire basic range of oscillators, filters and modulators that can be obtained separately or in very accessible pre-packaged units like this one.
The Pittsburg Modular demo was quite extensive, spanning several interconnected cases.
In the back room, there was a Buchla modular synth being demonstrated. It is a thing of beauty.
In an interesting twist, the owners of the Buchla and the adjacent Arp 2600 decided to hook them up together. You can hear a little bit of the result in this video:
While Dave Smith does not build modulars, he is a San Francisco institution in the synth world, and was represented at the synth meet. We even got a sneak preview of the upcoming tabletop version of the Prophet 12.
It had the same luscious sound as the keyboard version, though in my opinion the QuNexus keyboard does not do it justice. This is probably a bias a trained keyboardist.
In all, it was a fun afternoon at what I have decided is one of the “most dangerous stores in San Francisco”.
APAture 2013 Opening Night
After a four year hiatus, Kearny Street Workshop’s APAture festival is back. The previous APAture in 2009 was my first look into the Bay Area’s vibrant scene of emerging Asian Pacific American artists. This time around, I not only attended the festival and gallery exhibition opening, but participated as well as one of the featured musicians. I created a set that featured the dotara, a South Asian folk instrument, as well as a sketch box, DSI Evolver, and analog modular.
The presence of blue and purple in the setup is not an accident, as the color blue was central to this performance. It was part of my costume and the lighting as well.
[© 2013 Susa Cortez/Kearny Street Workshop.]
The piece unfolded with the usual black-cat-blue-light opening, followed by a gradual swelling and fading of sounds from the modular. The dotata and sketch box were fed into the Make Noise echophon for effects reminiscent of old studio tape delays, alongside more modern noisy elements from the other modules. Overall, the performance was well received. For some, it was their first experience with electro-acoustic improvisation, and expressed to me their curiosity about it afterwards.
The opening night also included an opportunity to see the work of the visual artists participating in APAture. There was quite a range of work, and several pieces were quite strong both technically and conceptually. Jessica Tang covered an entire wall with panels connected by strands of red string. A closer look revealed that the panels were successive runs of Google translator on a block of text. The view can observe the decay of meaning and language through her piece:
Yuki Maruyama’s wooden blocks function as 3D versions of manga (comic) frames. The blocks can be assembled into new comic narratives, i.e., an “exquisite corpse”. Having three dimensions, however, allows for more combinations and interpretations of the assembled comic.
More traditional artistic media were represented as well. Wenxin Zhang’s presented stark versions of portraiture and architectural photography.
One of the more amusing pieces was an interactive conceptual work by Alison Ho, in which she invited visitors to stick gold stars with various Asian stereotypes on a blown up image of her face. Her piece was intended to challenge the notion of Asian American’s as a model minority. Clearly, many people were having fun with it.
[© 2013 Susa Cortez/Kearny Street Workshop.]
Other works that piqued my interest was Mido Lee’s starkly beautiful photographs of dead/forlorn trees, including some from desert landscapes; and a minimalist ring of light presented by featured artist Michael Namkung.
APAture has continued throughout October with events focus on different media, including writing, performance, and comics/zines. The next event will be music night on Friday, October 25, at SUB/Mission (2183 Mission Street, San Francisco). If you are in San Francisco, do check it out.
