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At nearly 1,000 pages long, My Name Is Barbra is the ultimate exercise in directorial control, and a celebration of women's authorship.

The second event in the series Music on the Move features a presentation by the project Drummers Without Borders and Francisco Morales, sound artist and curator of the Front Gallery. Showcasing artists whose work and practice are informed by border dynamics, we present important perspectives on how music and performance play a role in reshaping the border narrative. Drummers Without Borders (DWB) was formed in San Diego, CA, in 2004 by Felix Diaz, Silvio Diaz, and Abril Diaz, a family of musicians, educators, and artists. It began as a program introducing music to students with special needs in one underserved elementary school. Felix, Silvio, and Abril taught the students how to drum to help establish feelings of accomplishment. Through the years, DWB gained experience, evolved, and grew to incorporate students and the public of all ages in the therapeutic practice of drumming. Drummers Without Borders’ mission is to develop music projects to address gaps in education, community building, health, and the environment stretching beyond San Diego. DWB’s welcomes collaboration with individuals and organizations of similar interests. They hope their expertise can create a better world for future generations. About Francisco Morales Eme Francisco Eme, originally from Mexico City, now lives and works in San Diego, CA. Francisco is a composer, producer, and multimedia artist. He mainly works with sound but integrates various disciplines into his practice. He has released solo albums, collaborations, and musical projects in electroacoustic, experimental, and electronic pop music, and other genres. His work has been featured in museums, galleries, and concert halls in Mexico, the United States, Europe, and South America. Francisco is the current Gallery Director at The FRONT Arte & Cultura, a bi-national art gallery in the San Diego-Tijuana border region, where he curates art exhibitions, workshops, concerts, and performances focused on the transnational artistic life of the area, but also attentive to the international art scene. Francisco Morales Eme’s Artist Statement: "My work is driven by a deep observation of the culture in which I live, social interactions, and everyday situations. Art, society, technology, and science merge in my practice. I strive to start a conversation with the audience about relevant issues of our time." Stay Connected on Social Media! Facebook & Instagram

STEPH RICHARDS, TRUMPET with MAX JAFFE, drums JOSHUA WHITE, piano STOMU TAKEISHI, electric bass Conrad Prebys Music Center Experimental Theater Event description: “A rising force in avant-garde jazz…a virtuoso of otherworldy sound” (Jazz Times) Trumpeter and composer Steph Richards has steadily established herself in as an engaging experimentalist on the jazz and creative music scenes, working with pioneering artists ranging Henry Threadgill and Anthony Braxton to Laurie Anderson and David Byrne. Her work is driven by a curiosity of what sensory variables are open to experimentation— often resulting in interdisciplinary works that include scent, dance, and performed in unexpected spaces such as carousels or underwater. Her works have been featured stages as iconic and varied as Carnegie Hall, the Blue-note and Lincoln Center. Originally from Canada, Richards has spent much of her career in Brooklyn, NY. Dedicated to experimental music without regard to genre, she is fluid in the contemporary music scene (she has performed alongside the Kronos Quartet and the International Contemporary Ensemble) as well as in the jazz and creative scenes, working with the many musicians such as Jason Moran, Ravi Coltrane and Sylvie Courvoisier. As a soloist, Richards’ solo records explore improvisation, spectral experimentation, groove and, in her more recent release, scent. Supersense (Northern Spy Records, 2020), is an inter-sensorial body of works by Steph Richards in collaboration with scent artist Sean Raspet. It is an exploration of the emotional dialogue between sound and scent, which evokes sensations that linger in the wordless space of sonic vibration and chemical reaction. "Supersense makes for high-grade experimental avant-garde and then some" (All About Jazz ****1/2). Her debut record Fullmoon (Relative Pitch Records) was hailed as a “bold pronouncement” by the New York Times and voted on multiple “Best of 2018” year end lists, including as the #1 Record of the Year by Free Jazz Collective. An electronic exploration of trumpet/resonating percussion and sampler, the record featured the work of pioneering electronic artist J.A. Dino Deane. Steph immediately followed up with her 2019 release Take The Neon Lights, a quartet situated between experimental jazz, free funk and avant rock, It also received high praise from critics, with Downbeat calling Steph “a virtuoso of nonlinear trumpet playing". For years she co-produced the NYC-based FONT Music festival alongside trumpeter Dave Douglas and now produces FONT West on the West Coast. She is on faculty at the experimentally driven University of California San Diego and is a Yamaha artist. Related links: Free. RSVP: http://music.ucsd.edu/tickets Streaming LIVE for FREE at http://music.ucsd.edu/live

You are invited to the Intersections Concert Series featuring Beyond the Blues with Mamie Minch and Mara Kaye (08.10.23). Join UC San Diego for our Intersections Concert Series at Park & Market in the Guggenheim Theatre hosted by UC San Diego and New York-based violinist Yale Strom, one of the world’s leading ethnographer-artists of klezmer and Romani music and history. MAMIE MINCH Mamie Minch is a longtime staple of New York City’s blues scene. Listening to her sing and play is like unpacking a time capsule of American music that’s been stored in her 1930s National steel guitar for decades and filtered through a modern femme sensitivity. Mamie’s honest, deep singing voice and old school guitar walloping become a vessel for her toughness and pathos as she delivers timeless performances that can rile, groove, sooth, and understand. If you’ve been lucky enough to see Mamie perform in New York City or somewhere else in the wide world, then you know: there are some things a person is simply meant to do. After graduating from art school in non-traditional printmaking techniques, Mamie came to New York City where she fell in with a crowd of 78 record collectors, some of whom had contributed rare recordings to the same reissue labels she loved. It was a mind-expanding time for her and she connected with a crowd who were interested in early American music. Soon, she was playing around the city in small clubs with her first band, Delta Dreambox. She met Meg Reichardt (Les Chauds Lapins, Low Down Payment), another guitarist and singer who could sound like she’d jumped off of an Edison wax cylinder, and they founded the four-piece, all-woman harmony group the Roulette Sisters, who played together for a decade and recorded two full-length albums. In 2008, Mamie released her first solo album, "Razorburn Blues," in collaboration with bassist/engineer Andy Cotton. Through the community of musicians centered around Barbes, Mamie connected with beloved singer/guitarist Dayna Kurtz. They toured together as a duo—two altos performing show-stopping, full-bodied harmony over layers of guitar—and made a 10” record, “For the Love of Hazel.” MARA KAYE The blues flows through San Diego. It has for a long time. Sometimes it has been obvious, flowing on the surface, and other times it has tunneled underground from far, far away just to bubble up underneath our feet. But, improbable as it may sound, a continuous stream of one of the greatest branches of American music flows through our city. Sam Chatmon, member of the legendary Mississippi Sheiks and possible author of the blues standard “Sittin’ on Top of the World” spent his summers here in the 1970s playing coffeeshops and folk festivals. Players like Robin Henkel and Tomcat Courtney have gigged constantly here for decades and made themselves into blues institutions. And still younger generations of musicians like Nathan James, Ben Powell, Whitney Shay, and Sarah Rogo have taken up the mantle. So, when a new blues voice appears in San Diego, it had better stand out. Over the last year, Mara Kaye’s voice has been doing just that. I’ve been watching it happen in real time as I back her up on mandolin and fiddle. When Mara starts singing in bars and dining rooms across the city, folks with their backs turned to the stage turn around. They smile, they applaud, like nice audiences do, but a lot of them become transfixed—like they’re seeing something they can’t believe, or something they didn’t know existed but hoped it did. When she sings, there is a kind of freedom that you can hear and see. And, at some subconscious level, that’s what every audience member wants to see—someone being free. The blues is a vast tradition, with important and distinctive branches spreading out over more than a century of evolution. Some of us love the old acoustic stuff from the Mississippi Delta; some of us love the later electrified stuff from Chicago. Some of us study it and stay close to the old styles; some of us draw from the old ways to create something new. Mara’s blues are deeply rooted in the old ways but remixed in a way that still feels novel—like some last pocket of the blues that never got explored in the old days, all wrapped up in a ball of 21st-century Brooklyn-bred attitude. (Written by San Diego Troubadour, 2020) More info: The Intersections Concert is a new interdisciplinary event series, presented by UC San Diego Division of Extended Studies, taking place at the multi-tenant, mixed-use business, arts, and educational office building in downtown San Diego’s East Village. Intersections offers new, diverse takes on traditional ideas and forms in a variety of disciplines, from artistic performances to educational lectures will take place at Park & Market’s state-of-the-art Guggenheim Theatre. Hosted by UC San Diego and New York-based violinist Yale Strom, one of the world's leading ethnographer-artists of klezmer and Romani music and history.

You are invited to the Intersections Concert Series featuring The Alison Brown Quintet presents Bluegrass: Bending It with Folk and Jazz. Join UC San Diego for our Intersections Concert Series at Park & Market in the Guggenheim Theatre hosted by UC San Diego and New York-based violinist Yale Strom, one of the world’s leading ethnographer-artists of klezmer and Romani music and history. One of the most multi-faceted minds in roots music, Alison Brown is a GRAMMY-winning musician, GRAMMY-nominated producer, former investment banker (with an AB from Harvard and an MBA from UCLA) and co-founder of The Compass Records Group which celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2023.  Alison grew up in La Jolla and began her musical career as a teenager in the San Diego bluegrass scene. Over the course of her career, she has expanded on her love of bluegrass and built a reputation as one of today’s most forward thinking and innovative banjo players. She is known for taking the instrument far beyond its Appalachian roots by blending bluegrass and jazz influences into a sonic tapestry that has earned praise and recognition from a variety of national tastemakers including The Wall Street Journal, CBS Sunday Morning, People, NPR and USA Today. On her new release, aptly titled "On Banjo," Alison continues her musical explorations on a set of original compositions with special guests including Steve Martin, Kronos Quartet, Sierra Hull, Anat Cohen, Sharon Isbin, Stuart Duncan and members of the Alison Brown Quintet. Alison is the recipient of the USA Artists Fellowship in Music and the Distinguished Achievement Award from the International Bluegrass Music Association. A pioneer among women in the music industry, Alison was the first female to win an Instrumentalist of the Year award from the International Bluegrass Music Association; in 2019, she became the first female 5-string banjoist to be inducted into the American Banjo Museum’s Hall of Fame. She recently worked with the Spring Valley-based Deering Banjo Company to develop the Julia Belle model low banjo in honor of the late John Hartford. Alison serves on the Board of Governors of the Recording Academy and as co-chair of the Steve Martin Banjo Prize. She lives in Nashville with her husband, bassist and Compass Records co-founder Garry West and their two children Hannah and Brendan. More info: The Intersections Concert is a new interdisciplinary event series, presented by UC San Diego Division of Extended Studies, taking place at the multi-tenant, mixed-use business, arts, and educational office building in downtown San Diego’s East Village. Intersections offers new, diverse takes on traditional ideas and forms in a variety of disciplines, from artistic performances to educational lectures will take place at Park & Market’s state-of-the-art Guggenheim Theatre. Hosted by UC San Diego and New York-based violinist Yale Strom, one of the world's leading ethnographer-artists of klezmer and Romani music and history.

As a photographer in the 1960s, Major Morris (1921-2016) captured scenes of inner-city life and protest marches. After the Civil Rights era, he earned a master’s degree from Harvard University and became an educator, training teachers in diversity and cultural sensitivity and working as a university affirmative action officer. Audience: This event is recommended for adults. Children are welcome!

International calls for a cease-fire grew this past week as Israel continued its strikes on the Gaza Strip in response to the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas militants.

For more than two decades, the Grammy® and Academy Award-nominated rock band Counting Crows have enchanted listeners worldwide with their intensely soulful and intricate take on timeless rock & roll. Exploding onto the music scene in 1993 with their multi-platinum breakout album, August and Everything After, the band has gone on to release seven studio albums, selling more than 20 million records worldwide, and is revered as one of the world’s most pre-eminent live touring rock bands. In October 1996, the band's double-platinum sophomore studio album, Recovering the Satellites, debuted at number one and further solidified their growing reputation as one of the leading American alternative rock bands in the world. A follow up to their early success, Counting Crows went on to release "This Desert Life" (1999), "Hard Candy" (2002), "Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings" (2008), "Underwater Sunshine" (Or "What We Did on Our Summer Vacation") (2012), "Echoes of the Outlaw Roadshow" (2013) and "Somewhere Under Wonderland" (2014.) In 2004, Counting Crows recorded the chart-topping “Accidently in Love” for the animated motion picture Shrek 2. The instant success of the track earned them an Academy Award nomination for “Best Original Song” at the 2005 Academy Awards, a Golden Globe nomination for “Best Original Song” and a Grammy® Award nomination for “Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media.” In September 2014, Counting Crows released their critically-acclaimed seventh studio album, Somewhere Under Wonderland, which debuted at No. 10 on the charts and was heralded by The Daily Telegraph as “… the best collection of songs since their debut.” The album consisted of nine sprawling tracks around rich sonic tapestries, which yielded some of the most grandiose yet intimate songs Counting Crows had recorded to date. 2018 marked 25 years since the band's inception and sent Adam Duritz, Jim Bogios, David Bryson, Charlie Gillingham, David Immergluck, Millard Powers and Dan Vickrey back on the road for the “25 YEARS AND COUNTING” tour. In 2021, Counting Crows ranked #8 on Billboards’ “Greatest of All Time: Adult Alternative Artists” 25th anniversary chart. After seven years, Adam Duritz and Counting Crows released Butter Miracle: Suite One in May 2021 to rave reviews. The band also kicked off their first tour since 2018, “The Butter Miracle Tour” in 2021, with sell-out performances across North America and Europe. “The Butter Miracle Tour,” will continue in the Spring of 2023 with dates set in Australia and New Zealand. Please note: the San Diego Symphony does not appear on this program. Stay Connected on Social Media! Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

A first in a career spanning six decades: Cher has a Christmas album. She talked with NPR about her mother, her experience working with Stevie Wonder, and the time she hopped a freight train at age 9.

Some striking writers and actors told us it would be a rom-com. Others suggested a mystery, an alien abduction movie, or even a heist flick!