Top of the Mark
999 California Street (at Mason Street) San Francisco, CA 94108

Celebrating the Beats at Top of the Mark
The Beat Museum partners with Top of the Mark at the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins to Present Poetry & Jazz Series This Spring
ruth weiss and Company
Herb Caen called her “The Beat Generation Goddess”—ruth weiss performs with Doug O’Connor (acoustic bass), Rent Romus (saxophone), and Hal Davis (percussion)

ruth weiss
STATE MEANT
for me poetry is teacher, healer & disciplinarian.
poetry is the messenger of language, the tuner that
vibrates the communication chord.

this is my chosen path & assignment

ruth weiss

1928 born in Berlin. 1933 escape to Vienna.

writes first poems. 1938 left for New York, Chicago, Bohemia & be-bop. 1950 to New Orleans old French quarter where first published and jammed with jazz muscians. 1952 to San Francisco North Beach. 1956 put poetry with jazz on the stage at The Cellar. I’ve barely begun…

Hal Davis is a retired officer in the Merchant Marines. He has been playing various musical instruments from strings to horns since he was 8 and performing with poet ruth weiss from Vienna to New Orleans and the Bay Area since 2010.

Doug O’Connor has been playing acoustic bass with ruth weiss since 1985. A 5th generation San Franciscan, Doug has played in local clubs since the early 1970s. He studied music at College of Marin, SF State and Haight Ashbury workshop as well as acoustic bass with Karl Model, Dean Reiley, Chuck Israel & Bill Langlois. He loves playing music that is creative in the moment.

Hailed by Downbeat as having “…a bold sound, unmistakeable sincerity and conviction”, Rent Romus “swings like death and hell” according to the late Danish writer and producer Jack Lind. A third generation Finnish American born in the great north of upper Michigan and growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, Romus’ work on the saxophone has been dubbed “ferocious” by the San Francisco Weekly and “central to the creative music world of the West Coast” by writer jazz critic Frank Rubolino. From his very beginnings as a student of jazz while being exposed to the twilight tutelage of Stan Getz he found himself drawn to the outer realms of Sun Ra and Albert Ayler, as well as Derek Bailey and Merzbow. Exploring improvisation and composition in a wide variety of musical settings he has recorded on over 35 albums to critical acclaim while helping to build and support the music community in the San Francisco Bay Area. With over 25 years of D.I.Y. music production, performance, and curation he runs Edgetone Records, a label for many forms of improvisation and experimentation. He is the founder and Executive Director of Outsound Presents where he curates the bi-weekly SIMM Music Series at the Musicians Union Hall, the weekly Luggage Store Gallery New Music Series, and an annual Outsound New Music Summit, a creative music festival held every summer in San Francisco.

Cost: 0-10

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