Center for New Music
55 Taylor St SF
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"ANIMALS AND GIRAFFES

Musician/composer Phillip Greenlief and writer Claudia La Rocco created animals & giraffes after meeting at Headlands Center for the Arts during their 2013 residencies. An ever-changing ensemble dedicated to interdisciplinary improvisation, a&g has performed at such venues as The Lab (SF), Pieter (LA), Reed College (Portland), Elastic Arts (Chicago), and the Chocolate Factory Theater (NYC). In 2017-2018, a&g was ensemble in residence at the Center for New Music, hosting monthly happy hours with musicians, visual artists, writers, and dancers. The group has three albums: July (Edgetone Records, 2017), featuring a who’s who of Bay Area improvisers; Landlocked Beach (Creative Sources, 2018), a live broadcast with Jon Leidecker on Over the Edge at KPFA FM; and animals & giraffes live @ medicine for nightmares (Evander Music, 2023), with Kyle Bruckmann, Alexandra Buschman-Román, and Adriana Camacho

CLAUDIA LA ROCCO BIO

Claudia La Rocco is the author, most recently, of the novella Drive By (Smooth Friend) and the chapbook-length essay Certain Things (Afternoon Editions). Her multi-genre novel petit cadeau was published in live, digital, and print editions by The Chocolate Factory. Her lectures and live works have been presented by The Walker Art Center, Dancehouse Australia, The Whitney Museum of American Art, et al. She edited I Don’t Poem: An Anthology of Painters (Off the Park Press) and Dancers, Buildings and People in the Streets, the catalogue for Danspace Projectʼs seven-week Platform 2015, which she curated. La Rocco was a critic for The New York Times, editorial director of Open Space, and now edits The Back Room at Small Press Traffic. Her second selected writings is forthcoming from Soberscove Press.

Phillip Greenlief BIO
Since his emergence on the west coast in the late 1970s, saxophonist/composer Phillip Greenlief has achieved international critical acclaim for his recordings and performances with musicians and composers in the post-jazz continuum as well as new music innovators and virtuosic improvisers. He has performed and recorded with Fred Frith, Meredith Monk and They Might Be Giants; albums include THAT OVERT DESIRE OF OBJECT with Joelle Leandre, and ALL AT ONCE with FPR (Frank Gratkowski, Jon Raskin, Phillip Greenlief). Recent residencies have included Headlands Center for the Arts and from 2012 to 2014 he was the curator at Berkeley Arts, a home for progressive music. He is the recipient of a San Francisco Bay Guardian Goldie Award.

DAVID BOYCE
David spent his formative years in NYC soaking up the city's vast multi-cultural offerings. After being bitten by the jazz bug in elementary school he began his studies of the saxophone. Music quickly became the focus of his non academic endeavors. He graduated from Cornell University with a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations, taught junior high school in the Bronx and moved to San Francisco just in time for the Loma Prieta earthquake. Living in the Bay Area inspired him to pursue music as a full time obsession. He co-founded the AfroFuturist jazz trio Broun Fellinis (27 years running) and became an active free lance musician involved in many musical pursuits that include Jazz, Post Rock, HipHop, World Music , Improvised and Electronic Music. His music has taken him to Europe, Japan and Canada as well as around the US. Currently, he performs with Broun Fellinis, Black Quarterback, Shimmering Leaves, Radio Sofia, 6 Roses, and Black Edgar's Musik Box.

EVELYN DAVIS
Detroit native and general wanderer Evelyn Davis is an inside/prepared/new music pianist, improvisor, pipe organist, composer, vocalist, synthesist, teacher, songstress, and maker of /participator in oddly shaped musics with an occasional side of performance art.
Evelyn plays in Lantskap Logic trio with Fred Frith and Phillip Greenlief, and formerly fronted the art rock duo CHIROMANCER.

ANNE WALSH JUNIOR
Anne Walsh is a maker of performance, video, sound and text works. She is professor of Art Practice at UC Berkeley and lives in Oakland CA with her daughter and their cat.

Zachary James Watkins
Zachary James Watkins studied composition at Cornish College and received an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College in 2006. Zachary has received commissions from The Empyrean Ensemble, Splinter Reeds, The Switch Ensemble, Density512, sfsound, The Living Earth Show, Kronos Quartet and the Seattle Chamber Players among others. Zachary has performed in numerous festivals across the United States, Mexico and Europe and his band Black Spirituals opened for pioneering Minimal Metal band Earth during their 2015 European tour. Zachary completed Documentado /Undocumentado a multimedia interactive book in collaboration with Guillermo Gómez Peña, Gustavo Vasquez, Jennifer Gonzalez and Felicia Rice. Zachary has been an artist-in-resident at the Espy Foundation, Djerassi, the Headlands Center for The Arts and the Amant Foundation Siena, Italy."

Cost: $15 General, $10 Members & Students

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