Re-live the magic of the June 25th Glass/Newsom/Fain benefit show with this incredible commemorative poster, courtesy of the esteemed artist Steve “Lard Dog” Erdman for only $25!!
Get it at our online store here or call us: 831-667-2574!
Archive for June, 2012
Tonight! It's Week 4 of the Big Sur International Short Film Screening Series at the Henry Miller Library!
Week four of the Big Sur International Short Film Screening Series is upon us!
Come down to the Henry Miller Library – 1/4 mile south of Nepenthe in Big Sur – tonight! Doors at 8 pm; movies start at 8:30. This event is by donation. Any questions? Call 831-667-2574.
And here’s the program!
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Vitiby Dustin Bancroft USA |
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The Futureby Venetia Taylor Australia |
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Body Memoryby Ulo Pikkov Estonia |
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505gby Jérémy Azencott France |
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A Wonderful Dayby Ariel Weisbrod Israel |
"Are you Experienced?"….a new short film starring Hippie Sven!
Fans of Hippie Sven will recall that last week he was prodded to chip in, get a job, and donate to the Library in our time of need.
When last we saw him, he was off to apply for jobs around Big Sur.
Let’s see how that turned out!!!
Tonight! Kath Bloom, Levi Strom, Cave Country, Range of Light Wilderness at the Henry Miller Library!
Tonight! the Library will host legendary singer-songwriter Kath Bloom, Big Sur’s own Levi Strom, LA’s men of leisure Cave Country, and the Bay’s best progenitors of the Velvets-meet-’69-era-Dead, Range of Light Wilderness.
Not to be missed under any circumstances.
Tickets are $8; get’em here: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3653569926
Hey, here's the program for tonight's short film screening in Monterey…..
Again, it’s our first night in the “big city” of Monterey! Not to be missed!!!
Tickets here!
4th Screening in the
2012 Big Sur International Short Film Screening Series.
June 27
Screening held at The Museum of Monterey in Monterey
Door @ 7 PM
Films start @ 7.30 PM
5 Custom House Plaza, Monterey, CA 93940 (831) 372-2608
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PROGRAM
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Vitiby Dustin Bancroft USA |
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The Futureby Venetia Taylor Australia |
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Body Memoryby Ulo Pikkov Estonia |
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505gby Jérémy Azencott France |
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A Wonderful Dayby Ariel Weisbrod Israel |
Tonight! Movies in Monterey and Live music (Levi Strom, Kath Bloom, more) at the Library!
What’s the best way to beat the post-benefit blues? Why remaining in a state of constant activity, distraction, and denial!
We got TWO things tonight: Movies at the Museum of Monterey at at 7 pm! Info here.
…and Kath Bloom, Levi Strom, and more at The Henry Miller Memorial Library, starting at 7 pm as well! Info here.
Questions? Call 831-667-2574.
These events will be helpful; after all, as my therapist once said, “if reality starts to catch up with you, run faster….”
Monday June 25th at the Warfield in SF! Joanna Newsom, Philip Glass to collaborate in benefit for the Henry Miller Library
Tickets available here!
Take it away, Paste Magazine:
“Joanna Newsom, Philip Glass and Tim Fain are set to join forces to create a one-of-a-kind performance at the Days and Nights Festival in San Francisco on June 25. The trio will perform collaborations as well as solo pieces to raise money for Big Sur’s Henry Miller Memorial Library.
Co-presenter ((folkYEAH!)) has previously put on shows to benefit the Henry Miller Memorial Library. The library, which was built in 1981, is in need of construction and federally required upgrades.
Artists, musicians and supporters have kept the library alive thus far with many performances presented by ((folkYEAH!)), including Blonde Redhead, Animal Collective, Cat Power, Arcade Fire and Ryan Adams.”
TONIGHT at the Library: book signing with "Handmade Houses" author Richard Olsen + incredible Big Sur-centric slideshow!
Tonight at the Library! A book signing with Richard Olsen, author of “Handmade Houses.” (Call us and buy one! 831-667-2574)
Neil circa '95, courtesy of Richard Olsen
You may heard about it. Olsen’s book looks at the roots of the “green” architecture movement and profiles incredible dwellings from around the globe, including – yep – Big Sur. (In fact, our boss’s home is in the book.)
But there’ll be more – much more!
The Big Sur quotient of the evening just quintupled, as Richard has also prepared an hour-long Big Sur-specific slideshow, with material that will be of special interest to locals, such as…
* Big Sur’s role in the evolution of the “wood-butcher” style
* A lot of family photos from the Trotter family
* Some very early Jean Varda in Big Sur images, and
* Certain photos that didn’t make it in his book, like Neil Young’s 1975 tour bus designed by Roger Somers (see the photo!)
The event will start at 8pm, with a discussion of the book with the author, with a slideshow of beautiful pictures from the book as well as supplementary photos to follow when it is dark. Q&A with the author and photographer Lucy Goodhart after this.
Coffee & chinese tea will be served and copies of the book available for sale at the event.
Don’t get us wrong, we love the big rock shows here at the Library. But these Big Sur community-driven events, focusing on local authors and artists, are really super-special. We encourage you to attend!
Any questions? Call us! 831-667-2574
Q&A: Philip Glass on Collaboration, Minimalism, and His Henry Miller Library Benefit Show with Joanna Newsom
Great interview with Philip Glass is Friday’s SF Weekly regarding Monday’s incredible fundraising event at the Warfield in SF. Philip Glass, Joanna Newsom, and Tim Fain performing together to help the Library.
Tickets are still available here.
Read the whole thing here, but here’s one of many money quotes:
How did you come to participate in this concert with Joanna Newsom?
We have a mutual friend, Magnus Toren, the executive director of the Henry Miller Library. Magnus has for years been doing special events at the library. He’s had Marianne Faithful there, he’s had me there, he’s had Laurie Anderson there, he’s had all kinds of people at this little place down in Big Sur, so he has a very good connection with people in the music world.
He was for some time suggesting that I meet Joanna Newsom, and for a year or so we never did meet, but then this concert came up and he said, Look let’s do it now, and we could do it for the Henry Miller Library and also for the Days and Nights festival, which is a festival I started in Carmel in Big Sur.
She is in New York some of the time and Northern California some of the time, and once we decided to meet, it wasn’t very hard to do. I’d been playing with Tim Fain, a wonderful violinist, and he is a great fan of Joanna Newsom’s, and when he heard that she was going to be doing this, he said, “Can I play too?” and I said, “You bet you can!”
The idea of violin and piano and harp is a classical setup. It’s a beautiful combination, you can hear everything, there is great clarity, and every instrument has its own voice. We had never gotten together until that first rehearsal here at my house in New York, and we spent about three hours the first day and another three hours the next day and we came up with some very nice music.
Read the whole thing here!!
Philip Glass and Joanna Newsom's one-off concert to save the Henry Miller Memorial Library
Fantastic piece from the SF Bay Guardian. Tickets for Monday’s show on sale here. Read the whole thing:
He’s worked with the likes of Ravi Shankar, Leonard Cohen, Woody Allen, and Allen Ginsberg. Next week, one of the most influential living composers, Philip Glass, will add singer-songwriter-celebrated harpist Joanna Newsom to his list of collaborators.
On Monday, they will take the Warfield stage, along with violinist Tim Fain, in a one-off performance to benefit Big Sur’s Henry Miller Memorial Library.
A fixture of Northern California’s artistic heritage, the library will face closure this fall unless it manages to raise $150,000 to upgrade its water system to existing code. Glass and Newsom, both proponents of the library, have joined forces to secure its future.
Dedicated to the acclaimed author of Tropic of Cancer, who moved to Big Sur in 1944, the Henry Miller Memorial Library isn’t a library in the conventional sense.
The small wooden cabin, serving as a bookstore and community center, is nestled in a redwood grove on the Big Sur coastline, right beside a grassy area where concerts are held. The stage has drawn performers as varied as Laurie Anderson and Fleet Foxes, all of whom have found something special in its intimate, picturesque setting.
According to executive director Magnus Toren, the library “ties into what Big Sur represents for many people, which is… getting out of the hustle-bustle of regular life, oftentimes urban life. It’s a little bit of a sanctuary… As soon as you enter through the gate, you feel transported into a different kind of world.”
Glass, a Manhattanite, was inspired by the library’s setting when he gave his first concert there in 2008, describing it as, “a very, very idyllic place to perform.”
Yet, his attachment to California didn’t stop there. In 2011, Glass established the Days & Nights Festival, a two-week multimedia arts showcase held in Carmel Valley, which will present the upcoming benefit at the Warfield, along with folkYEAH!.
Given their respective backgrounds, the thought of a collaboration between Glass and Newsom has raised some eyebrows.
Credited alongside Steve Reich and Terry Riley for radically altering the direction of 20th century classical music, Glass is celebrated for his early minimalist works (Einstein on the Beach; Music in Twelve Parts) his film scores (Koyaanisqatsi), an immense collection of symphonies, operas, and ballets, and of course, his many collaborative projects.
Glass’ symphonic renditions of David Bowie’s Low and Heroes are a testament to his “maverick” status in the world of composition.
Newsom too has an individualist appeal. The native Californian has garnered a large following over the past decade for her innovative, highly percussive approach to the harp.
Noted for her eccentric, high-pitched voice (she can recall a young dalian escort girl and an elderly woman in the same breath) and genre-bending songwriting methods, Newsom is esteemed as any singer-songwriter of her generation. “She has a command of the whole range of the [harp], and can adapt her voice to it very well,” Glass explained during a phone call last week.
On her most acclaimed album, Ys, (co-written with revered pop-collagist Van Dyke Parks) Newsom filtered extensive “songs” through a flowing set of dynamics, more befitting of a classical composition than an indie-folk record.
“Artistically, and musically, [the collaboration is] just so interesting,” Toren says. “They’re both iconoclastic. They’re both on the outer edge of certain areas in music. And so, I felt… there could be some synchronicity, some kind of chemistry. And, I think that’s what’s happening.”
Based on the success of several rehearsals in New York, Glass speaks enthusiastically about the collaboration, and the new places it has taken him as an artist. “[Although] I’ve used the harp a lot in orchestral music, I’ve never been in such an intimate relationship with it… It brings out a texture in the music I write… which I’m hearing, almost for the first time.”
Next Monday, the audience should expect solo material from Newsom, Glass, and Fain, in addition to collaborative renditions of Newsom’s songs and Glass’ trios.
When asked if he accepts the title of “classical composer”, Glass was quick to identify himself as a collaborator, above all.
“Part of my agenda,” he explained, “was to get out of the new-music ghetto, into a bigger musical world, where I could work with David Bowie, or Emmylou Harris, or Joanna Newsom… and it wouldn’t be a surprise. No one’s going to say ‘what is he doing now?’ because I’ve done it so much that it’s more like, ‘there he goes again!’”
A Benefit for Big Sur’s Henry Miller Memorial Library
Philip Glass and Joanna Newsom with Tim Fain
Mon/25, $62.50-$140
Warfield
982 Market, SF
(415) 345-0900
www.thewarfieldtheatre.com