Between its fantastic name and emphasis on helping San Francisco musicians make a worthwhile living, the Magik*Magik Orchestra caught my attention with its pressure-filled beginning. (No garage band start here). The orchestra’s founder and artistic director, Minna Choi, was studying composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music when she received a request by the booker at Cafe du Nord to put together a 34-piece string orchestra. And not just for the exercise, but to play the West Coast premiere of Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood’s orchestral work, Popcorn Superhet Receiver.
“The performance was slated to occur that summer while Greenwood was in town to play the Outside Lands Festival with Radiohead, and would be his first U.S. hearing of the work,” production manager Julia Vanderham recalled. “Minna set to work putting together an ensemble of some of the finest talent at the Conservatory and, in August at a sold-out show at the Herbst Theater, the Magik*Magik Orchestra was born.”
Most of the Magik’s original members were students and it now accepts players on a word-of-mouth basis through application. The full service “orchestra-for-hire” typically works on a contractual basis with bands who want to add classical musicians to their own music, whether live or recorded. Music arrangements, sheet music preparation, coordinated rehearsals, and the opportunity to work with a bank of talented young folks are among the reasons their work is solicited for social music gatherings and a full-length album with John Vanderslice.
A talk given in a suit and Detroit Tigers cap that urges for an end to new media buzzwords and explores the cultural roots of the White House vegetable garden? Throw in a stat that 4 percent of people are tone deaf and anthropologist Grant McCracken has me hitting play on his PSFK Conference talk for a second time. If the observations shared here about the need for rewarding creativity within company planning are at like his book “Chief Culture Officer: How to Create a Living, Breathing Corporation,” I’ll be reading it on the Kindle in under a minute.
Just as submissions close for male and female nominees for their “40 Under 40: The Future of Feminism,” the Feminist Press’ upcoming publications are worth a browse. Even if someone you support doesn’t make the final list of social justice and gender equity champions, sharing some of the publisher’s titles with them is a great consolation. A few that piqued my interest include:
Streb: How to Become an Extreme Action Hero: Elizabeth Streb has been called a movement architect, action mechanic and Evil Kanevil, and I’m curious about whether her book can do justice to her descriptions of choreographed crashes. Her extreme action is described by FP as “a form of movement that’s more NASCAR than modern dance, more boxing than ballet.” I charge you to find someone who’s able to make better use of confined space (see “Little Ease” at 11 minutes).
Should your Saturday need a bit of spirituality and Sandra Bernhard, Tablet Magazine’s Dawn Festival event at the Academy of Sciences could be well worth a visit to Golden Gate Park. The self-described “late-night cultural arts festival celebrating the Jewish Holiday Shavuot” will also feature Gary Shteyngart, author of “Russian Debutantes Handbook,” and Daniel Handler, author of the Lemony Snicket series, slinging cocktails. You might say that the harvest festival is being reimagined–Technicolor aquarium included–while keeping the tradition of staying up all night learning. Expect good things from Spike Jonze’s video tribute to Maurice Sendak and Tiffany Shlain’s reading of “Yelp-with apologies to Allen Ginsberg” before the clock strikes 12.
SFMOMA’s much anticipated birthday celebration on Friday night will include a dressed up ground floor and museum supporters in “attire to surprise” (which, though confusing, is still better than a recent nearby gala’s prompting for “cultural” dress). Brazilian Girls are set to perform after a rooftop dinner, and it will be a pleasure to celebrate 75 years of groundbreaking art, the Jeff Koons monkey/Michael Jackson sculpture notwithstanding.
Hearing in her own words that Ritual Roasters founder (and Ignite Bay Area speaker) Eileen Hassi is getting hip to social sharing got me most excited. But what I’ve even more looking forward to is an assortment of upcoming events with the company’s beans and crew. To celebrate the roastery’s fifth birthday this week, City Beer will be introducing the “Ritual Payback Porter,” a Speakeasy infusion with the Brazilian Chapadao de Ferro, on Folsom St. starting at 5 PM on Thursday. But the big event will be an alley party on Saturday at Ritual HQ to feature live music, SF Bike Coalition valet, the Crème Brulee Cart, and cyclecide rides. As though I needed anything more than their carefully-selected caffeine to be grateful for.
If tomorrow’s bike in movie from the creators of the Disposable Film Fest wasn’t enough reason to get excited about this humpday, registration for TEDxSoMa later this month might be. The second day of insightful talks at the Parisoma co-working space on May 21 is particularly of interest with its focus on female entrepreneurs advancing the world through technology. As the “daughter” of the TED conference, TEDxSoMa is a community-organized gathering to inspire and “marshal like-minded innovationists.” Ten-minute talks will be delivered by the likes of Nicole Lazzro, founder of the first player experience design company XEODesign, and Pankaj Kedia, who delivers Intel silicon in the form of mobile Internet devices.
The benefits of TEDx events have been described in detail this week on the Ignite organizers message board, and the videos I’ve seen of the community events have been fantastically informative. My favorite to date is the “raising kids to be entrepreneurs” talk out of Edmonton, but that could change pending the next local talks.
Tonight’s SF Unified School District meeting may be of interest to ye 20 and 30-somethings, even those who aren’t educators or directly affected by administrative budget cuts. Public comments are invited in support of Mission Prep, a proposed public charter school that’s looking to increase local student potential (and not waiting to do so either–if approved, the school would provide K-8 education starting next fall). The meeting at 555 Franklin could help in realizing the vision for the school, which would include a no excuses approach to all students meeting English literacy goals. School board member (and Bi-Rite team member extraordinaire) Kirsten Bourne has been part of the long approval process for some time now, explaining, “Jane Henzerling, Mission Prep’s proposed head of school, and the school’s founding board staunchly believe that it is not until this literacy gap is closed that all children raised in the Mission will have an equal chance of becoming leaders in their communities.”
My yoga teacher first recommended Soren Gordhamer’s book after busting me trying to check my iPhone mid-practice. “Wisdom 2.0: Ancient Secrets for the Creative and Constantly Connected” was a much-needed read upon feeling less effective (but more stressed) while working day and night in the information economy in SF. The tome is a worthwhile resource whether read while commuting, on a tablet, or even while paying attention with its recommendations for the Internet obsessed, including:
“When we focus on that we are connected, the technologies become more important than their function. We think, Wow. Look how many people I can communicate with. Look how often I can read my e-mail and text messages. This is impressive…however, it is meaningless since the impact of these actions depend on the what this is present during them.”
Gordhamer just launched the Wisdom 2.0 Conference, a three-day summit whose speakers included a Zen priest, the CTO of Twitter, and neuroscientists for discussions about modern day mindfulness around technology. (I was one of the only people on a laptop during the panels, but Twitter and Facebook updates about the programming still abounded throughout.) As might be expected, the author and conference host is a man on the go but graciously offered a few thoughts on our hyperconnectivity and why it needn’t always own our time.
SF: You weren’t always tuned into our culture’s tech-assisted overactivity. What made you take a step back and realize how we might be hurting ourselves?
SG: I started to feel the sense of angst and rush that seemed to be directing more of my life, and I knew this was something I did not want to continue. more
In working on a series of rush deadlines for a yet-to-be-unveiled physical design magazine, news of the SF-based 48 HR Magazine came as a welcome surprise. The idea of creating a crowdsourced publication in two days around a common theme is enticing with the promise of “No long commitments. No pitches. No grinding editing process. You make good stuff fast; we publish it with other good stuff.” Inspired by the live event series Pop Up Magazine and the volcanic reaction catalog Ash Cloud Tales, contributors will have until tomorrow at noon to produce and submit their work before it’s laid out for glossy shipping starting Sunday. Theme to drop at noon.
