News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
SAN FRANCISCO’S ICONIC Fillmore Jazz Festival returns for its 35th year on July 6 and 7, promising a vibrant weekend of music, arts and community spirit. Spanning Fillmore Street from Jackson to Eddy, this year’s festival is back at full strength, presenting an impressive lineup across five stages and showcasing the talents of 25 local…
By FRAN MORELAND JOHNS Members of Calvary Presbyterian Church’s choir are on a two-week tour of Europe, taking the high-level musicianship of the Fillmore Street church to historic sites in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. The choir joined singers from other choirs in commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day in the Normandy region of northwestern…
REMEMBRANCE | ELEANOR COPPOLA (1936-2024) By ALISON OWINGS The sad news spread fast among her friends: Ellie Coppola died. She was 87, and died at home in Napa Valley on April 12. For years she and her creative family lived near Fillmore Street, first on Webster Street and later up on Broadway. Late in life,…
IT WILL BE a night from the past, still relevant today. On Thursday, January 11, Sheba Piano Lounge will present “The Fillmore Eclipse,” a one-night evening of immersive theater that brings to life a familiar neighborhood story. It’s a recreation of a 1950’s underground jazz club, called the Eclipse, at a time when Fillmore Street was alive…
IT’S NOT EVERY DAY that a photo from the neighborhood is published in The New York Times. But today is that day. Alongside a review of Cosmic Scholar, a new biography of anthropologist/artist/filmmaker/mystic/music collector Harry Smith, is a photograph of Smith before one of the murals in the legendary Fillmore jazz club Jimbo’s Bop City.…
NEW NEIGHBORS | CHASE ROBERTS There will be no jazz festival on Fillmore this Fourth of July weekend, but Victoria Wasserman is determined to bring music back to one block of the street. Wasserman is opening Vic’s Winehouse at 1870 Fillmore and turning the Wine Jar into a wine bar with music. “I was devastated…
SAN FRANCISCO’S Fillmore District — known as the “Harlem of the West” in the 1940s and ’50s — was once a cathedral of jazz, its dozens of clubs inhabited by celestial beings such as John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker. The Fillmore’s heyday marked an important chapter not only in jazz history…
FOR THE FIRST TIME in decades, there will be no jazz on Fillmore Street this Fourth of July weekend. The annual Fillmore Jazz Festival has been canceled due to the coronavirus and the ban on large gatherings of people. “Sister! I just want to cry because there’s no festival this weekend,” said jazz vocalist Kim…
FILLMORE’S ONLY remaining joint — the Boom Boom Room, hard by the Geary Street bridge — is closed and may not reopen without an infusion of fresh cash. “We are faced with permanent closure without emergency funding,” says owner Zander Andreas in a fundraising campaign seeking to raise $60,000. “The survival of our intimate and…
DEMOLITION OF THE interior of the 110-year-old Clay Theatre on Fillmore Street began today, with workers hauling out the seats, the projectors and the popcorn machine. Landmark Theatres, the company that operated the Clay in recent decades, has instructed its staff to leave the building empty by the end of the month. The theater closed…