Music discovery has felt a bit lonely to me lately. Because I usually write to music, I’m curious about good new tunes to try but–out of laziness–find myself defaulting to my and close friends’ Rdio playlists without exploring much that’s different.
Enter Band of the Day, a free app from lauded design and development company 955 Dreams (the creators of the eye-catching app The History of Jazz). It features a different band daily in a magazine-style format with large photos, brief stories, social ratings, and, oh, music tracks. Its tiled calendar makes for scrollable fun, and you’d be silly not to give it a whirl.
My beau and I saw FELA! at The Curran this week in its first week since being transplanted from Broadway and found ourselves largely agreeing on The New Yorker’spositive–but tempered–review from the original show. Our thoughts on the plusses: the costuming and dance scenes are perfection and the audience interaction (including derriere-shaking instructions) is a blast. The not-so-good: the show drags yet it omits key parts of the Nigerian musician/politician’s personal story, including the controversy over his death from AIDS-related infection. Shortcomings aside, the show still had us listening to “Zombie” for days.
I saw the feature length “Another Earth” on a recommendation from a friend and the Times’ intriguing coverage; I left startled and, well, more intrigued. The San Francisco International Film Festival selection and Mike Cahill’s directorial debut is a vibrant look at the aftermath of a car crash caused by Rhoda (co-writer Brit Marling) and her attempts to help the grieving husband (William Mapother). Interplanetary elements are woven throughout, and well, to a haunting score. Friend and filmmaker Alley Pezanoski-Browne called it a “sci-fi film that is actually a character study.” Take her advice and see it.
I have 7×7 to thank for the reminder about the Fashion Feud at my beloved Rickshaw Stop. The live fashion design competition should be quite a site for the bar, which usually hosts concerts for plaid-clothed music fans or moustachiod fundraisers. It’s being presented in collaboration with the San Francisco Fashion and Merchants Alliance as similar events are hosted in Seattle and Portland. May a Californian designer hail victor.
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.
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.
I’m not the biggest short film connoisseur, but at last year’s Sundance Film Festival I was struck by “The World’s Largest Shopping Mall” about a massive shopping center in south China that stands nearly empty despite housing space for hundreds of stores and a Venice-style canal system. It was shot by local filmmaker Sam Green and producer Carrie Lozano, who worked on two other projects that are well worth watching and discussing: “The Weather Underground” feature and the live documentary “Utopia in Four Movements,” which had its California premiere last night as part of this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival.
With on-stage musical accompaniment by the Brooklyn band The Quavers, Green narrated a set of four stories about utopian ideals, socialist and capitalist politics, the intended universal language Esperanto, and (of course) the merits of forensic archeology at Kabuki Cinema. The combination of audio and Keynote slides and video clips were mixed live by co-director Dave Cerf for an audience of local filmmakers and critics on the fourth day of this year’s festival. I found focusing on the stories themselves a bit challenging given the on-site production elements–cue ADD–but found it a compelling take on filmgoing following last year’s live episode of This American Life. (The undertaking isn’t a small one either, as evidenced by website FAQs that include “what is a live film?” and “what is utopia?”) And the gathering aspect seems to have been part of the point: in the show notes, SF essayist Rebecca Solnit wrote:
Television chopped up movies with commercials and put them in the middle of domestic distraction, but that was nothing compared to this moment when films are on your iPhone and your laptop and in fuzzy tiny windows on YouTube. The worth thing about these new modes of viewing isn’t that they diminish cinema as visual and imaginative spectacle. The worst thing is that they’re watched furtively and alone. Cinema, which was once a great banquet in a dream palace is now often a snack devoured absentmindedly in isolation.
I had seen a porn for gals book a few years ago that was almost vision-straining in the eye rolls it induced in me. A clean sink and a Baby Bjorn are nice and all, but their turn on potential is…far-fetched for most women at best. Enter SF-by-way-of-Boulder designer Jamie Panzarella, an online experience creator who’s not too timid to invite women to put a Rick James track on a video of a gent shaving (or a plate of rotating gourmet cheese) and address it “supertramp.”
Knowing friends with varied triggers that make them melt, Panzarella sought a way to address the particularness and complexity with which many women pursue that which makes them melt. Ladywood.biz was born, and the just-launched site’s steamy video creation tool with a send-a-friend capability and array of curated news items make for entertaining reasons to return. (The eye-catching magenta and black color scheme isn’t bad, either.)
“It all started about a year ago when I was at a hotel and decided to peruse the porn selection–just to see,” Panzarella said. “I was surprised by the variety: horny housewives, swinging soccer moms, naughty cheerleaders…All of them were cheap. Not one movie catered to ladies. This intrigued me: that we don’t have the options, and if we did, what would they be?”
Now that the Winter Music Fest is wrapping, the 12th Independent Film Fest opens Thursday at The Roxie, and not without its share of good-looking features (including Beyond the Pole and Wah Do Dem) and mark-the-calendar-worthy events (a roller disco party at Cellspace on Saturday and a filmmaker coffee date at Four Barrel next weekend, for example). Enough staring at this screen–get yourself to the big one, skates optional.
Tonight’s San Francisco Ballet opening night gala to honor Helgi Tommason’s 25 years as artistic director for the company was a contradiction for me. I wonder if I was alone in finding it simultaneously glamorous and unstreamlined with performances that were lovingly presented while being manipulative. This isn’t to say it wasn’t arresting–the intriguing costumes and precise performances are what I’ve come to expect from their shows at the War Memorial–but I found the first act a bit discombulated in its combination of the affectionate pas de deux from “7 For Eight” and the light-hearted ensemble number “Mistake Waltz” from “The Concert.” Still, Tommasson’s coreography of “Concerto Grosso” couldn’t have been more beatifully prepared with five male dancers of similar strength and grace against a simple backdrop (and not just because it was the same aqua to be used in the upcoming redesign of TheSanFranista–truly, monocromatic ankle-length outfits have never looked so good). It’s enough to have me excited for a repertory season to include performances as diverse as works by Fokine/Possohkov/Forsythe and the American premiere of “The Little Mermaid.”
Tommason and “The Little Mermaid” images by Erik Tomasson.
