Category: Music

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Music Performance Poetry

Celebration: Poet Laureate Genny Lim Inaugural Address

Sunday, February 2, 2025
3:00pm – 5:00pm
Koret Auditorium

San Francisco Main Library
100 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA 94102

An afternoon of poetry, youth performances and music to mark the inauguration of San Francisco’s 9th Poet Laureate, Genny Lim, at the San Francisco Main Library.

Hosted by City Librarian Michael Lambert, the event featured performances by youth poets from Youth Speaks, a youth chorus from Clarion Children’s Theater, past San Francisco poets laureates Kim Shuck, devorah major and Alejandro Murguía with live art by Adrian Arias, and a reading by writer Kevin Simmonds.

Genny Lim, Poet Laureate of San Francisco. Photo: Kit Castagne

Lim was appointed as the city’s poet laureate in September 2024 by then Mayor London Breed. As part of her required duties as laureate, she will host an inaugural event to celebrate her poetic vision for San Francisco.

Lim is the first Chinese American appointed to the city’s three-year poet laureate position. She was born and raised in San Francisco’s Chinatown and North Beach neighborhoods and is a graduate of San Francisco State University and Columbia University. Her writing has been widely awarded and published.

Categories
Music Performance Poetry

2025 Mayoral Inauguration Day: Chinatown Night Market & Community Festival

Wednesday, January 8, 2025
5:30 PM – 9:00 PM
Grant Avenue
(between Sacramento & Jackson, Ross Alley & Commercial Street)
FREE and open to the public

San Francisco, the oldest Chinatown in the United States, celebrates with an evening of food, culture, and community at the Chinatown Night Market & Community Festival, held in honor of Daniel Lurie’s inauguration as the 46th mayor of San Francisco on Wednesday, January 8.

Web Gallery
2025 Mayoral Inauguration Celebration in Chinatown: Francis Wong and Genny Lim perform at Edge on the Square
2025 Mayoral Inauguration Celebration in Chinatown: Francis Wong and Genny Lim perform at Edge on the Square
2025 Mayoral Inauguration Celebration in Chinatown: Francis Wong and Genny Lim perform at Edge on the Square
2025 Mayoral Inauguration Celebration in Chinatown: Francis Wong and Genny Lim perform at Edge on the Square
2025 Mayoral Inauguration Celebration in Chinatown: Francis Wong and Genny Lim perform at Edge on the Square
2025 Mayoral Inauguration Celebration in Chinatown: Francis Wong and Genny Lim perform at Edge on the Square

For this special, unprecedented event, Edge on the Square is co-presenting cultural arts programs with organizations such as the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco, the S.F. Chinese Chamber of Commerce, BeChinatown, and more collaborating to created an evening in Chinatown to be remembered for the ages!

CHINATOWN INAUGURAL CELEBRATION
SCHEDULE
5:30 – 7:00 PM
Edge on the Square
800 Grant Avenue, San Francisco, CA
Web Gallery
Cantonese Opera at the 2025 Mayoral Inauguration Celebration
Cantonese Opera at the 2025 Mayoral Inauguration Celebration		 Genny Lim, Francis Wong and Terri Dora Wong at the 2025 Mayoral Inauguration Celebration
Genny Lim, Francis Wong and Terri Dora Wong at the 2025 Mayoral Inauguration Celebration
Web Gallery
2025 Mayoral Inauguration Celebration in Chinatown: Genny Lim, Francis Wong, Ralph and Mary Remington
2025 Mayoral Inauguration Celebration in Chinatown: Genny Lim, Francis Wong, Ralph and Mary Remington
6:00 – 9:00 PM
Chinatown Night Market; Edge is open until 9pm.

What to Expect:

  • A bustling night market featuring delicious food and beverages for sale from local vendors.
  • Live performances, including a soon-to-be-announced local headliner.
  • An inclusive celebration spotlighting the rich heritage and vibrant spirit of Chinatown.

This event is open to the public, so bring your friends, family, and anyone who shares a passion for a stronger, brighter San Francisco.

Please take public transportation or ride share, as parking will be very limited.

Categories
Music Poetry Radio

Poets on Palestine on KPFA-FM “In Your Ear”

In Your Ear, hosted by Art Sato
KPFA-FM (94.1)
Saturday, December 21, 2024
4:00 -5:00 pm PST

Jazz & Afro-Caribbean music with

Genny Lim
(San Francisco Poet Laureate)

Rafael Jesús González
(Berkeley Poet Laureate Emeritus)

Devorah Major
(San Francisco Poet Laureate Emeritus)

poems on the genocide in Gaza-Palestine
by Israel and the United States
(English, español)

listen live & on archives (December 21, 2024)

In Your Ear is a cool fusion of jazz and Latin music, giving voice to musicians deserving wider recognition, and showing that jazz and Afro-Caribbean music are separate, but “branches of the same tree” as the late Afro-jazz pioneer Mario Bauza used to stress. Hosted by Art Sato.

Categories
Interview Music Performance Television

San Francisco Leonard Cohen Festival

Passing Through:
An Evening of Poetry and Music Inspired by, Loved by,
and Left Behind by
Leonard Cohen
November 8, 2024, 7:30PM
Swedish American Hall

A November celebration of the words, music, and spirit of Leonard Cohen in San Francisco. Hosted by San Francisco’s Conspiracy of Beards, a choir of men that sing the songs of Leonard Cohen, the SF Leonard Cohen Festival is a multi-artist, multi-event celebration of the poetry, literature, and music of the late singer, songwriter, author, and poet.

The three-night festival began on November 8th with works inspired by, loved by, and left behind by Cohen and performed by the city’s poets, including 2024 Poet Laureate Genny Lim, Alejandro Murguía, Tess Taylor, and Gregory Pond, and local musicians Middle Harbor Songbirds, Ruby Lee Hill, Josh “Yosh” Warren, and the female choir, Conspiracy of Venus.

“What makes him so special, his songs are like journals of his life. And because they’re so deeply personal and intimate, they become universal, because everyone can identify with his struggles, his conflicts, his love affairs, his heartbreaks, his grappling with his spirituality, and his self-criticism as a human being.”

— GENNY LIM on LEONARD COHEN

Genny Lim at the 2024 San Francisco Leonard Cohen Festival. Photo by Jon Bauer

Genny was among the artists featured in this piece by PBS News Hour special correspondent Mike Cerre, who went to the annual Leonard Cohen Festival in San Francisco to hear why Leonard Cohen’s music and poetry is celebrated by older and younger generations.

Categories
Music Performance Poetry

Haiti Solidarity @ La Peña

A Concert and Fundraiser October 6, 2024, 6pm

La Peña, 3105 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley

Join us for an evening of beautiful music and cultural performances as we raise funds for the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund.

Today, the situation in Haiti could not be more dire. Government backed paramilitary groups continue to terrorize opposition neighborhoods. Six hundred thousand people have had to flee their homes in the wake of this violence. Food insecurity now threatens nearly 5 million people, including 2.4 million children, in a country of 12 million.

Donations to the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund go directly to grassroots organizations in Haiti that are the hope for Haiti’s future. Your funds support internal refugees who have been driven from their homes as well as those fleeing Haiti. They help sustain grassroots women’s organizations, mobile health clinics and literacy programs in Haiti’s poorest communities. Your donations will help support the University of the Dr. Aristide Foundation (UNIFA), which has opened a new teaching hospital under the most challenging conditions. And your funds will aid the growth of independent community-based media, so critical in a society where the rich control almost all sources of information.

For more information: http://www.haitiemergencyrelief.org

Categories
Music Poetry

Genny Lim and Hafez Modirzadeh Perform

5 poems about Palestine with Genny Lim (poet) and Hafez Modirzadeh (saxophone).

These poems were written ten years before Oct. 7, 2023 when the Hamas attacks on Israel triggered a retaliatory siege and genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

I wrote the poems at the peak of Palestinian resistance, when peaceful demonstrations were violently met with sniper fire, tear gas and arrests by the IDF. Palestinian children were shot and killed or arrested for throwing stones at IDF and, often, storm troopers barged into Palestinian homes in the middle of the night and dragged family members out to prison, where they were interrogated and often beaten and issued long sentences without legal counsel.

These poems attempt to bear witness to the suffering and pain of the Palestinian people under Occupation.

— GENNY LIM

01 – Fifth Sun.mp3
02 – The Rose.mp3
03 – Koan1.mp3
04 – Gaza.mp3
05 – The Valley1.mp3

Includes “Gaza” which was used on “In Your Ear”, Apex Express and Raza Chronicles on KPFA.

Produced by Freedom Archives, 2013.

Authors: Genny Lim, Hafez Modirzadeh • Year: 2013 • Call Number: CD 931 • Format: CD • Producers: Greg Landau, Claude Marks • Collection: Compact discs representing digitized copies of analog tapes

Categories
Music Poetry

Corazón del Barrio: Celebrating Our Indigenous Origins

Sunday, October 30, 2022, 5pm to 7pm at the new Baobab, 2243 Mission St., between 18th & 19th

Categories
Music Performance Poetry

27th Annual Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival

Sat., October 15, 2022
Noon to 4:30 p.m. • Free
Festival Main Stage • Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Park • Berkeley

Genny Lim read poems about Water, Wildfires and War and sang Jim Pepper’s “Witchi-Tai-To” and “Besame Mucho,” accompanied by the Barry Finnerty Trio, featuring Finnerty, Akira Tana on drums, with bassist Peter Borshay, on the Festival Main Stage at Martin Luther King, Jr. Civic Center Park in Berkeley, California.

Web Gallery
Barry Finnerty, Genny Lim and Akira Tana at the 2022 Watershed Poetry Festival
Barry Finnerty, Genny Lim and Akira Tana at the 2022 Watershed Poetry Festival

Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival is a collaboration of Robert Hass, Poetry Flash, Ecology Center/Berkeley Farmers’ Market, and Ecocity Builders. The Watershed Festival emerged from Robert Hass’s national Watershed initiative during his tenure as U.S. Poet Laureate, 1995-97, which explored connections between environmental awareness and the American literary imagination. The first two Watersheds were held at the Bandshell at Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.

https://poetryflash.org/programs/?p=watershed_2022_inperson

Categories
Music Performance Poetry

Lewis Jordan & Music at Large

Friday, September 30, 2022

4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m.

St. Mary’s College

Cornelius Art Center: Patio, 1928 St. Marys Road, Moraga, CA 94575

Critical Mass · Lewis Jordan and Music at Large · Bruce Ackley · Sandy Poindexter · Ollen Erich Hunt · Jimmy Biala · Genny Lim

On Critical Mass, Lewis Jordan (alto, baritone and poetry), Sandi Poindexter (violin), Bruce Ackley (soprano and tenor), Ollen Erich Hunt (bass), and Jimmy Biala (drums/percussion) use improvisation and poetry to access a space of sincerity, engagement, and free expression. They are joined by Genny Lim on the title track.

With a unique interdisciplinary approach to poetry and music, this Bay Area musical ensemble brings an open spirit of improvisation to their original compositions. Performances highlight solo instrumental voices (saxophone, violin, bass, and percussion) as well as collective interplay. This year, the group released its fourth CD, Critical Mass (Innova 073).

https://www.stmarys-ca.edu/lewis-jordan-music-at-large

Categories
Music Performance Poetry

Ode B’kongofon
Hafez Modirzadeh Ensemble

Thursday, May 12 – 7:30pm

Bird & Beckett Books & Records

653 Chenery Street, San Francisco, CA 94131

Genny Lim. Photo: Bob Hsiang, 2016.

With B’kongofonic blood at the saxophonic root, well below surface engraving, resonating within its alloy, sounds are gathering to invoke a heroic people: kongo as “gathering”, a Central African people’s homeland; fon as “sound”, a West African people’s language; B’ referring to all “peoples” along the resistance continuum.  Hear ye, the animating force of a strange horn sanctified!

Genny Lim – poetry, invocation
Hafez Modirzadeh – kongofon, assorted winds
Francis Wong – kongofon, assorted winds
John-Carlos Perea – electric bass, cedar flute, vocals
Keshav Batish – drums, tabla

Genny Lim and the ensemble perform Modirzadeh’s epic poem, Ode B’kongofon. 

$25 cash cover charge; byob and a mask (optional if vaccinated)

birdbeckett.com

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