Turquoise Yantra Grotto
32 Turquoise Way SF
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Sings with Strings:
Master Instrument Inventors
Bart Hopkin & Peter Whitehead

While renowned for performing experimental music with self-invented instruments, on this special evening Bart and Peter will each perform a set showcasing them as songwriters and bards with their reinvented strings. Bart will perform on his Y-string guitar, floating bridge guitar, wobble steel guitar, deep guitar, and his new semi-self-playing SSP-Strings instrument. Peter Whitehead performs haunting folk tunes accompanied on his hand built ethnic folk instruments from found objects.

@ Turquoise Yantra Grotto
Fri. Dec 19, 8-10 pm
32 Turquoise Way SF
$10-15

Bart Hopkin has worked as a guitarist and musical arranger for several decades, performing, recording, composing and teaching in many contexts and places. He’s also an inventor and maker of musical instruments. He is director of Experimental Musical Instruments, an organization devoted to unusual musical instruments. In addition to building, teaching and consulting, he has written many books on instruments and their construction, and produced books and CDs featuring the work of innovative instrument makers.
Bart received a B.A. magna cum laude in Folklore and Mythology specializing in ethnomusicology from Harvard University in 1974, and later picked up a B.A. in music education and a teaching credential at San Francisco State University. He has faithfully attended the School of the Autodidact ever since.


Peter Whitehead is a composer, songwriter and instrument builder. While traveling in S.E. Asia in 1989 he realized he could combine sculpture, performance and music by constructing and playing original instruments. Having experimented with playing ‘found’ objects before this, it was at this time that he began to construct his first instruments. Many of his creations are derived from folk instruments or are based on images of ancient instruments that no longer exist, although the materials used to construct them are modern or industrial.

Whitehead has composed songs and scores for film and dance. He has also composed for and performed with a number of prominent choreographers and dancers including Mikhail Baryshnikov, Susan Marshall & Company, Anna Halprin, Charles Moulton/Janice Garrett and Sarah Shelton Mann. His work has appeared in several films including “City of Ghosts” directed by Matt Dillon and “Following Sean” directed by Ralph Arlick. Thanks to digital technology his music has been used for Television and Radio in over 30 countries.


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The Turquoise Yantra Grotto is a house concert series for avant improvisers and invented instrumentalists with a focus on ethno-modernism and extended techniques. We hold a monthly event which is part concert, part art opening and part social club, near glen canyon in San Francisco.

Cost: $10-15