Don’t miss our 4th Annual Community Day Celebration with a full day of free events featuring performances and exhibitions by Larkin Street Youth Services, Skywatchers, SF Neon, Singers of the Street, Au Co Vietnamese Cultural Center, 826 Valencia Tenderloin Center, and the San Francisco Rock Project!
Let us know you’re coming on our FB event page here!
Schedule · Saturday, May 11, 2019
11:45 AM - 12:15 PM
826 Valencia
12:30 PM - 1:00 PM
S.O.S. Singers of the Street
1:00 PM
Matt Haney gives short remarks
1:10 PM - 2:10 PM
Larkin Street Youth Performances
2:10 PM - 3:10 PM
Au Co Vietnamese Cultural Center
5:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Skywatchers
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
SF Rock Project
Performance Information:
S.O.S. Singers of the Street--
SOS Singers of the Street is a community choir composed of homeless, formerly homeless and homeless advocates. There are no auditions but welcome all people who love music and group participation. We meet every Monday morning at 11:00 am at St. Paulus Lutheran Church which is located at 1541 Polk Street (between California and Sacramento) for rehearsals. Homemade lunch is then served.
The director of SOS is Sally Ann Ryan. She has led the choir for the past two years and previously was the Supervisor for Visual and Performing Arts for the San Francisco Unified Schools. She loves to bring new music and knowledge about the music to the Choir. The accompanist is James Campbell who is a favorite musician in San Francisco. James is known by professional musicians and singers as a performer and music arranger for all types of music. He has long performed in notable hotels, restaurants and piano bars all over the city.
Larkin Street Youth Performances--
Larkin Street artists will showcase current works in development, in a variety of forms from spoken word and poetry to hip-hop and movement pieces.
About the Larkin Art Program
The Larkin Street Youth Services Art program offers daily, ongoing, drop-in art classes and mentoring, as well as, longer term career tracks. Larkin Street staff and community artists host individual and group classes, workshops and mentoring in visual arts (illustration, painting, animation, media and graphic arts), performing arts, community engaged art practice, music production (recording & editing), music training (guitar, piano, percussion, vocal arts), sewing and design. Young artists enrolled in the Art Program may participate in specific career tracks, including Performing Arts (through our annual Performing Arts Night, Arts, Media and Entertainment learning center, and work with the Skywatchers youth ensemble); Music Production; Visual Arts and Design and other specific programs we co-create with our community partners.
Au Co Vietnamese Cultural Center--
Vietnamese traditional folk song, dance, and music presented by the Au Co Vietnamese Cultural Center and Au Co Productions. These traditional arts will be performed by the Su Viet Zither Ensemble and Folklore Opera Group.
The Su Viet Zithers Ensemble was founded in 2010 by the Au Co Vietnamese Cultural Center’s Zither class, led by Emmy Award winner, Master Vanessa Van-Anh Vo. Besides preserving the Vietnamese traditional arts, the ensemble's vision and long-term goal is to bring the younger generation into the forefront of traditional Vietnamese music. In the most recent five years, the class has developed its musical skills to advanced levels, allowing the ensemble to perform in grand theatrical productions as well as nation-wide events such as John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Oakland Symphony, Asian Arts Museum, Legion of Honor, Asian Heritage Street Celebration, Mid-Autumn Harvest Festival and community events in the Bay Area as well as nation-wide events.
The Su Viet Folklore Group was founded in 2013 by the collaboration of the Au Co Vietnamese Cultural Center’s Vietnamese young artists and community local artists who belong to a younger generation who study the traditional Vietnamese opera called Cai Luong, a theatrical art best known and loved by the people living along the Mekong River at South Vietnam. The performers have learned the traditional music and its accompanied theatrical movements and gestures. This group has performed at different cities in California, with the noble intention of preserving and promoting this traditional genre of music in America.
Skywatchers--
The Skywatchers ensemble of Tenderloin residents will preview excerpts from We Came Here to Live, the featured performance of Skywatchers’ 8th annual Festival, At the Table: Visions. Skywatchers is a collaborative arts ensemble of Tenderloin residents and ABD artists, who co-create multidisciplinary performance works centered on the stories of and issues facing its constituent members. In We Came Here to Live, this intergenerational, mixed ability ensemble offers a vision of what it means to have a seat at the table, to dismantle the table, to create inclusive forms of discourse through creative resistance to systemic oppression and disenfranchisement. Came Here to Live will premiere May 17-19 at the 8th Annual Skywatchers’ Festival, At the Table: Visions. 220 Golden Gate Ave, 94102. Friday 5/17 @ 7, Saturday 5/18 @ 4, Sunday 5/19 @ 2. More information and full schedule at www.abdproductions.org/skywatchers
Co-created by the Skywatchers Ensemble and Bay Area artists Anne Bluethenthal, Shakiri, jose e abad, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Malia Byrne, Gabriel Christian, Dazié Grego, and Deirdre Visser with Frances Sedayao, Rama Hall, Ian Winters, and Peekaboo Jenkins.
About ABD Productions/Skywatchers: ABD Productions is a nonprofit arts organization that inspires social change through the arts. Founded in 2011, ABD’s Skywatchers program brings residents of San Francisco’s Tenderloin District into partnership with professional artists to create multi-disciplinary, site-specific performance installations that amplify the rich and complex stories, life experiences, and talents of community members. Skywatchers is structured on the belief that relationships are the first site of social change. We believe that large-scale transformation begins with intimate, interpersonal exchange. We believe in the power of art and collective creative endeavors to transform lives, embody our interconnectedness, and infuse our lives with agency, possibility, and increased vitality.
SF Rock Project--
San Francisco Rock Project (SFRP) is a 501(c)3 Nonprofit organization dedicated to teaching the fundamentals of music to youth in the Bay Area and beyond in a dynamic and collaborative environment. To promote learning and confidence, Rock Project teaches through live performance. This show will feature songs from across the rock and roll universe from Nirvana to Chuck Berry and everywhere in between, as well as original compositions written by the students. SFRP serves youth from 7 - 18, and also features lessons for adults.