The return of the Return the Gift curated series (Series 3) continues with the second installment of four great shows, with three great performing artists featuring
Fred Frith/
Karen Stackpole Duo, Joseph Dee Bradshaw, and NGN.
Doors: 7:30/ Show: 8:00 PM
Donation: $10-25
Fred Frith/
Karen StackpoleFred Frith is a songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist (bass, keyboards, violin) and an improviser performing mostly on various permutations of the electric and acoustic guitar. Occasionally I use crude home-made string instruments of my own invention. I learned how to compose in rock bands, starting with Henry Cow in 1968. This meant writing for and with people that I knew, and then arriving at the final result through a collective rehearsal process. During the Henry Cow years I fell in love with the recording studio and its endless possibilities. I embrace the idea of the “work” as an unfinished and constantly mutating entity. Collaboration, improvisation, sculpting sound in the studio, and treating composition as an open-ended process remain central to how I make music.
Karen Stackpole is a drummer/percussionist, and has a long-standing passion for gongs, scrap metal, and a range of "ethnic" instruments. She specializes in dynamic soundscapes and textures and has contributed gong sounds to more conventional musical genres as well as providing source material for film soundtracks. In her exploration of metals, she has cultivated some distinctive techniques for drawing harmonics out of tamtams with various implements. In addition to solo work, she has performed and recorded with Machine Shop: Live Amplified Gong Experience (a duo with electronics master, Drew Webster), Sabbaticus Rex, Ghost in the House, Vorticella, Malcolm Mooney and the Tenth Planet, the Francis Wong Unit, and the rock band Steel Hotcakes. Most recently her work has focused on duo performances and recordings with experimental instrument builder Krys Bobrowski (Gliss Glass & Gongs), contrabassist Bill Noertker (Talking Frog), and guitarist extraordinaire
Fred Frith.
"It took a long, but worth the wait - after almost twenty years of talking about it and not managing to do it, Fred and Karen finally played as a duo in 2018, making a record that appeared as Nature on the Sub Rosa label in 2025 after many more delays!"
Joseph Dee Bradshaw is a guitarist based in Oakland. His first solo album, The Conversion, released in 2025, features several long-form acoustic fingerstyle compositions. On his second album, The Lavender Promise (released August 2026), he continues the fingerstyle explorations with a more improvisational approach, offering up several spontaneously composed pieces. Aside from his solo work, he is a member of the free improv group Fornax Linteum, whose self titled album was released earlier this year.
NGN is a songwriter, harpist and crooner debuting songs from their upcoming album ‘Tea Horse Road’ (2027). Taking influence from Appalachian folk melodies, Great American Songbook and Chinese tea ceremony, these songs offer a kaleidoscope of feeling, ritual and decolonial sapphic cowboy vibes.
Cost: $10-25