SF Live Arts at St. Cyprians

livearts

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Claudia Schmidt – Saturday, May 13th

Saturday, May 13,  8:00pm
$TBA door / $TBA advance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYB8mtF08cs

More than four decades as a touring professional have found  Michigan native Claudia Schmidt traversing North America as well as Europe in venues ranging from intimate clubs to 4,000 seat theatres, and festival stages in front of 25,000 rapt listeners. She has recorded nineteen albums of mostly original songs, exploring folk, blues, and jazz idioms featuring her acclaimed 12-string guitar and mountain dulcimer playing

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Kristine Hoffmann – Saturday, May 6th

Saturday, May 6,  8:00pm
$TBA door / $TBA advance

Kristin Hoffmann is a singer/songwriter based in New York City. She grew up studying classical piano, opera, guitar and composition, and has toured with The Wallflowers and Tina Dico, as well as opening for Brandi Carlile, Feist, Howie Day, Dar Williams, Richie Havens and Ben Lee.

 

 

Kristin Hoffmann is a singer-songwriter who has a gift, one we can all experience through her ability to be open.  As a human compass, she navigates through her own waters right into ours, with sound, like poetry without words. Her perfect pitch is a serene perfume. We, as an audience, are the witnesses and we watch as she volunteers her soul’s journey.

Personal meaning in her music is secondary. “It’s not really about me,” says Kristin. “Music is my vehicle.” Her voice often feels like a ceremonial language from a deep, universal, sound code. She works with a certain delicacy on a cellular level.

The red walls of the music café enclose us in a net of intimacy, and we watch Kristin trace the air again with her hand, as if writing music in thin air, just for us. We become bonded by her sound that shadows around our silhouettes and pools us together. Her secrets become our secrets.

Kristin says, “Music for me is about communion, a way to bring people together, a reminder of infinite possibility.”

Cor unum, via una  ~ one heart, one way.

It’s startling how vulnerable she is as she calls forth her music. Her voice feels like our own. There is a certain familiarity and it becomes a constant reminder that we all come from sound, that common and planetary heart beat we can feel and recognize. “My goal,” she says, “is to spread love, light, peace, and truth through the vehicle of music and energetic frequencies.”

Her magnetism makes the bond. Her truth is subversive. She is revolutionary.

 

 

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Cascada de Flores – Saturday, June 17th

nostalgic song and traditions of Mexico and its neighbors

Saturday, June 17th,  8:00pm
$TBA door / $TBA advance

 

The core members of Cascada de Flores have been re-imagining Mexican tradition for years.

After falling for Mexican music as a young woman, Arwen Lawrence toured with Grammy-winning L.A. mariachi heavyweights, Los Camperos de Nati Cano, an apprenticeship that honed her skills and deepened her love for Mexico’s musical language. With them, she recorded and performed in venues such as the Teatro Degollado in Guadalajara and Lincoln Center of New York. Nati always nudged her towards what she already did naturally: to sing with heart.

Jorge Liceaga grew up in Mexico City, buying his first guitar with the money he’d earned shining shoes. Self taught, he was later mentored by local legend Leonardo ‘El León’ Salas, a transplant from Yucatan, who taught Jorge to ‘guasanguearla’ (play with that special Yucatecan swing). Jorge followed his sister and found himself amongst local masters of artistic communication: The flamencos of Gitanerías. From them he received a raw and complicated education, which contributed to his special sensitivity as accompanist.

The pair founded Cascada de Flores in San Francisco, CA in 1999. They began by journeying into the hidden corners of Mexico, seeking the real stories of that hugely diverse country. Inspired by the fact that even as deep as its diversity goes, Mexico has a continuous love affair with foreign cultural phenomenon and incorporates them as if they were its own, the ensemble spends 14 years swimming in a magical place somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean sea where rancheras, boleros, sones and guarachas from México, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Colombia meet.

Cascada de Flores has recorded now four albums, collaborated in numerous projects, including theater and cinema and toured to several areas of the United States. In Mexico they have been delightfully received in venues such as The central plaza in Mexico City with Jorge Saldaña, la Tasca in Jalapa, and lately in the beautiful Biblioteca Henestrosa in Oaxaca city and the main festival of Tezoatlán, Oaxaca. They even traveled to study with the trovadores of Santiago de Cuba. Cascada de Flores is now a phenomenon, cherished by the Latinos that hear them, and opening the minds of its non-Latino fans. Opening minds and hearts to the real stories of Mexico and Latin America has become this group’s unofficial mission; Jorge feels pride at being able to arrive at a performance without a wide sombrero and still be received with open arms

In Radio Flor, in the format of a historic yet half-imagined Radio program, this Mexican-American duet has found a venue in which they can express their vast curiosities and talents, while shining in collaboration. In Radio Flor they are joined by musicians with similar longings from both sides of the ‘border’, three veterans of San Francisco’s traditional music and Latin Jazz scenes: Saul Sierra-Alonso (bass, Mexico City), Marco Diaz (piano & trumpet, San Francisco), Brian Rice (percussion, Michigan). The duet has always thrived in collaboration with like-minded artists. The current Cascada de Flores family includes Sabra Weber (voice, flute), Jorge Mijangos (guitars), Rick Flores (guitar), Miguel Govea (accordion, trumpet, bass), Kyla Danysh (violin), Jim Connelly (bass) and Cynthia Holberg (voice).

Additionally, Cascada de Flores is firmly committed to music and cultural education. They present a bilingual music and dance program for children in schools, libraries and theaters such as Montalvo Arts Center (Saratoga), Herbst Theater (San Francisco), Mexican Heritage Plaza (San Jose) and Lobero Theater (Santa Barbara). They have performed in over 1000 Western US schools and Libraries reaching over 500,000 children with their educational program. Recently, the Dúo brought their musical story to la Mixtecan hills of Oaxaca, Mexico. Close to home, members of Cascada de Flores present ongoing bilingual classes and special workshops for children and families focused on traditional Latin American folk songs and Mexican traditional music and dance.

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Dirty Cello – Saturday, May 20th

Rockin’ blues band

Saturday, May 20,  8:00pm
$TBA door / $TBA advance

From China to Italy, and all over the U.S., Dirty Cello brings the world a high energy and unique spin on blues and bluegrass. Led by vivacious cross-over cellist, Rebecca Roudman, Dirty Cello is cello like you’ve never heard before. From down home blues with a wailing cello to virtuosic stompin’ bluegrass, Dirty Cello is a band that gets your heart thumping and your toes tapping!

“Dirty Cello’s music is all over the map: funky, carnival, romantic, sexy, tangled, electric, fiercely rhythmic, and textured, and only occasionally classical.” Lou Fancher, Oakland Magazine.

“The band plays every style imaginable, and does some fantastic covers. (Their rendition of “Purple Haze” is incredible.) But what is most spectacular about them is hearing the depth of soul in Roudman’s playing—it goes beyond what most people would expect from the instrument. She plays it with so much heart, you’ll wonder why more bands don’t have a cellist.” Good Times Santa Cruz
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“The group seamlessly careens from blues to bluegrass and rock in a way that really shouldn’t make sense but somehow does.” – LA Times

 

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MARIA MULDAUR – Jazzabelle

with John R Burr

Saturday, February 25 8:00pm
$25 door / $22 advance

 

Multi-Grammy nominee, Maria Muldaur,  best known for her 1974  mega pop hit, Midnight at the Oasis, has recorded  40 solo albums covering all kinds of American Roots Music, including Jazz and Big Band, Blues, Gospel, R&B and “Bluesiana.” For this performance, as part of our Women in Music series, she’ll be performing her special show, Jazzabelle …An evening of Vintage Classic Jazz, & Naughty Bawdy Blues, with special guest, pianist extraordinaire John R. Burr.

Despite her considerable pop music success, Maria’s 52-year career could best be described as a long and adventurous odyssey through the various forms of American Roots Music. Starting with the folk revival of the early ’60s, she began exploring and singing early Blues, Bluegrass and Appalachian “Old Timey” Music, joining the very popular Jim Kweskin Jug Band. In the early 70s, Maria collaborated, recorded and toured with legendary Jazz giant, Benny Carter, who lead an all-star Big Band of jazz greats,
Her critically acclaimed 2001 Stony Plain Records release, Richland Woman Blues, was nominated for a Grammy and received a Blues Foundation nomination for Best Traditional Blues Album of the Year; as was the follow up album, Sweet Lovin’ Ol’ Soul.

Her timely 2008 album, “Yes We Can!” covered songs from some of the most socially conscious songwriters of the past half century, and featured her “Women’s Voices for Peace Choir,” which included: Bonnie Raitt, Joan, Baez, Jane Fonda, Odetta, Phoebe Snow and Holly Near.
Her recent album Steady Love features- what she calls “Bluesiana Music” – her own brand of New Orleans-flavored Blues, R&B and Swamp Funk. It reached #1 on the Living Blues Chart, and garnered her another nomination for Best Traditional Female Blues Artist from the Blues Foundation.
Her 40th album, First Came Memphis Minnie, is a loving tribute to the pioneering Blues woman who inspired and influenced so many female Blues artists who followed in her footsteps, many of whom joined Maria on this special project: Bonnie Raitt, Phoebe Snow, Ruthie Foster, Koko Taylor and Rory Block.

We’re proud to welcome Maria back to our series.
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Doors open 25 minutes before the concert.