JazzFest reviews are in: ‘It was fun’

Posted on July 9, 2011 by editors

By Jesse Hamlin

A sea of sun-drenched people flowed along Fillmore Street on Saturday, partaking of the musical and gustatory pleasures — not to mention the beer, wine and margaritas — served up by San Francisco’s biggest street bash. Blues and barbecued oysters. Fried catfish and Nigerian folk songs. Those were some of the sounds and scents that wafted through the air at the annual Fillmore Jazz Festival, a swinging two-day affair that stretches from Jackson Street in tony Pacific Heights down to Eddy Street in the gritty heart of the Fillmore District.

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Old friends, new faces at JazzFest

Posted on June 30, 2011 by editors

For the 27th time, Fillmore Street will celebrate the Fourth of July by hosting the Fillmore Jazz Festival, this year on July 2 and 3. It’s by far the largest street party in the city, stretching from Jackson Street in Pacific Heights south through the Fillmore Jazz District to Eddy Street. Ruth Dewson, the long-reigning Mayor of Fillmore Street, remembers how the festival got its start.

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Film Society strikes a deal in Japantown

Posted on June 23, 2011 by editors

The stylish cinema at New People in Japantown will be the home of the Film Society.

After more than a year of exploring the possibilities, the San Francisco Film Society is coming to the neighborhood — but to Japantown, not the Clay Theater.

The Film Society announced this morning that it will establish a year-round home and take over the programming of the stylish and high-tech Viz Cinema at the New People complex at 1746 Post Street in Japantown. The cinema opened in 2009 as part of a new J-Pop Center devoted to contemporary Japanese pop culture.
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A local treasure debuts at Yoshi’s

Posted on June 18, 2011 by editors

Globetrotting jazz vocalist Kitty Margolis returns to Fillmore — source of some of her earliest musical inspiration — for her debut performance at Yoshi’s on June 24.

“When I was a kid, barely 12 years old,” says the fourth generation San Franciscan, “I would go to the Fillmore and Winterland and see all sorts of bands on the same bill — Miles, the Dead, Otis Redding, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix.”

Margolis left the city to study at Harvard, but music had her in its grip. She dropped out and returned to San Francisco just in time to record her first album, “Live at the Jazz Workshop,” in 1988 shortly before the revered club closed.

“My first apartment was on a tree-lined one-block alley in North Beach, down the street from Stan Getz and his Dalmatian, James,” Margolis remembers. “Nearby was another one of the last great clubs, Keystone Korner.”

Margolis has gone on to international acclaim, traveling and performing at clubs and festivals around the world. Although she continues to live in San Francisco, she rarely performs here, making the Yoshi’s date a special treat for a local treasure.

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Coming to the Fillmore: yoga

Posted on May 1, 2011 by editors

By Barbara Kate Repa

Yoga.
Trance dancing.
Nurturing food from the earth.
Music by the Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart.
A crowd of true believers at the Fillmore.

It sounds like the ’60s all over again. But this time, in a wholly wholesome good way, it’s a unique happening called Wanderlust coming to the historic Fillmore Auditorium on May 21.

The idea for the event came from a New York couple with California roots whose lives took some serendipitous turns. Jeff Krasno was already managing, producing and recording musicians when his wife Schuyler Grant decided to open a yoga studio.

“At the same time my music business was taking off, I also saw the growth of the yoga industry and became very close to its value and cultures,” Krasno says. “I thought perhaps we could marry the music with that progressive, social, environmental community to create a large-scale event.”
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‘A great player who loves what he’s doing’

Posted on May 1, 2011 by editors

Charles Unger plays on Sunday nights at Rasselas.

MUSIC | Anthony Torres

I first heard Charles Unger play when I stepped into the Sheba Piano Lounge on the way home from Yoshi’s one night. As I walked in, I was immediately struck by the intonation of the tenor sax and the ease with which Unger and his band, The Experience, moved through Carlos Santana’s “Europa.” Since then I have seen them at both Sheba and Rasselas. Every time, it’s been a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

With jazz, they say it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing. These guys swing, and they do it in a way that incorporates a range of influences. The music moves and is inflected with a Latin groove and a Middle East undercurrent that creates a melancholy feel so sensuous a person can’t help but be moved.

Unger is a great player. He’s also a great guy who loves what he’s doing and does it with all the seriousness in the world. Music for him is a spiritual mission and a quest for a kind of secular redemption that he has pursued since he was a child — one that sustains him and has brought him a wealth of knowledge and experience.
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Snow at the Swedenborgian

Posted on April 20, 2011 by editors

The film crew at the snowy Swedenborgian Church, with Nicole Kidman in the doorway.

Hollywood is in the neighborhood and they’re going to church — the Swedenborgian Church at Washington and Lyon. It snowed on the little church this week — or appeared to — when Nicole Kidman was filming scenes for Hemingway & Gelhorn, a new HBO film directed by Philip Kaufman, who lives just over the hill. It’s a drama centered on the romance between Ernest Hemingway and war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, Hemingway’s inspiration for For Whom the Bell Tolls. The film also stars Clive Owens and is expected on HBO in 2012.

A preview:

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The night is brighter

Posted on April 11, 2011 by editors

In what locals are taking as a hopeful sign — quite literally — the historic neon marquee at the Clay Theater is lighted once again. It has been dark and broken for months, a tangible nightly reminder of the theater’s uncertain future. Now that the lights are back on — and Catherine Deneuve is back on the screen — hope springs eternal.

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Tribute to a Fillmore jazzman

Posted on April 3, 2011 by editors

Photograph of Allen Smith by Scott Chernis

San Francisco trumpeter Allen Smith, who died February 3 after a long illness, will be remembered and celebrated by many of the top jazz musicians in the Bay Area at a “Musician’s Tribute to Allen Smith.” It will be held at Yoshi’s at 1330 Fillmore on Sunday, April 10, from 2 to 4 p.m. There is no admission fee, but contributions will benefit the Fillmore Jazz Heritage Center, which is directed by his son Peter Fitzsimmons.

Vocalist Kim Nalley: My last gig with jazz legend Allen Smith

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She was here first

Posted on February 15, 2011 by editors

Many in the music world are still scratching their heads about the Grammy Award for Best New Artist that went to bass player Esperanza Spalding Sunday night. But not jazz fans in the Fillmore, who know her from her performances at Yoshi’s.

EARLIER: At Yoshi’s, beauty and the bass

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