Concert at the Cadillac: Lady Bianca
Friday May 2, 2025 | 1-2pm
At the Cadillac Hotel | 380 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102 (next door to TLM!)
Free! All Welcome! No Registration required!
The Bay Area’s “Queen of the Blues and Gospel” Lady Bianca cut most of her deep discography in the TL at the historic Hyde St. Studios; on May 2, the Grammy-nominated vocalist/pianist, songwriter and producer brings her live set to the people of the TL with a Concert at the Cadillac!
TLM is thrilled to host Lady Bianca and her “Handsome Man Trio” for a special free Concerts at the Cadillac presented as part of the museum’s ongoing Sounds of the Tenderloin live music series. She is a Grammy-nominated vocalist/pianist and songwriter, a life-long working musician who has made an indelible mark on the Bay Area’s Blues and Gospel scenes. A torchbearer for the “Mighty Oakland Sound,” Lady Bianca, has amassed a catalog of over 300 songs, and has produced, arranged and recorded 9 albums, many of which were cut in the Tenderloin at the historic Hyde St. Studios.
Bianca Thornton’s roots are in the great music town of Kansas City, and her father taught her Texas Blues as a child; her prodigious talent as a youth earned her a full scholarship to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music at age nine. Bianca's first paying gig was at the age of seventeen with Quinn Harris & The Masterminds and it was Harris who bestowed the title of Lady on Bianca as she was “so pure and conservative”. Since then, Lady Bianca has evolved into an icon in the Bay Area and is widely known as the “Queen of the Blues and Gospel.”
She has performed, recorded and toured internationally as a solo artist and with Frank Zappa, Sly Stone, Van Morrison, John Lee Hooker, Sylvester, and Hall of Fame legends Bobby Bland, Willie Dixon, Etta James, Curtis Mayfield, Koko Taylor, Joe Louis Walker and dozens more as a featured opening act, vocal arranger and record producer. In 2017, Lady Bianca sang “Oh, Freedom” in the Roots Award-winning documentary Gina’s Journey: The Search for William Grimes and was the featured narrative voice in the Oakland-based documentary Evolution of the Blues. These days, she performs original songs from the catalog of her own “Magic-O Records” and “StayFree Publishing/BMI,” the record label and publishing company she founded with her partner Stanley Lippit.
Learn more about Lady Bianca and listen to her music via her website.
Concerts at the Cadillac is a free concert series open to the public that, since 2007, has provided high-quality music for the residents of the Cadillac Hotel and San Francisco's Tenderloin District. The Tenderloin Museum honors the longevity and resilience of this unique series by co-presenting select concerts that animate the neighborhood’s undersung cultural history through live music, the mission of TLM’s ongoing Sounds of the Tenderloin series of public programs. These monthly Friday afternoon performances bring live music to the Cadillac’s spacious lobby, which hints at the grandeur of the historic building when it was constructed in 1907 and now features the Patricia Walkup Memorial Piano, a meticulously restored 1884 Steinway Model D concert grand piano. Focused on jazz, Latin, and classical, the Concerts at the Cadillac’s programming features local, working musicians steeped in an instrumental or vocal practice, brings live music into the home of Tenderloin residents, and is “dedicated to the power of great music to uplift and inspire.” Many of the performances have been documented with high quality audio and video, creating a vast archive of full length concert videos that reveals the hotel’s dedication to its live music program and traces a loose network of the city’s most talented musicians and ensembles, many of whom have returned to perform for the series multiple times.
Funding for TLM’s Sounds of the Tenderloin series is provided by Specified General Fund for the Museum Grant Program under the California Cultural and Historical Endowment.