Serving the San Francisco Bay Area New Music Community

Mon, Sep 28 2026 7:30 PM

Tom's Place
3111 Deakin Street Berkeley
Click for Venue page

On Monday, September 28, 2026 at 7:30pm, Tom's Place presents

Devin Gray (percussion) with Lorin Benedict (vox humana)
Brett Carson (solo piano)

Devin Gray's work is characterized by a relentless pursuit of quality and sincerity, as well as an exciting energy that propels him toward diverse musical directions. His compositions are noted for their complexity and engagement, often described as both brainy and intimate. He splits his time between Brooklyn and Berlin (when he's not visiting us in Berkeley).

Lorin Benedict is a singer who practices a vocal idiom that evinces an obsessive concentration on phonetic structures that suggest language, but defy conventional decoding. He calls what he does "scat singing", but it goes way beyond that.

We're happy to welcome back Brett Carson, composer, pianist, improviser, poet, and theater artist based in Oakland CA. (At this show he will be playing the piano.) His compositional work, which has been described as "fascinatingly intense" (Stephen Smoliar, SF Classical Voice), explores the juxtaposition of a gleefully chaotic plurality of musical approaches. This is combined with a penchant for surreal world-building and an exploration of the bizarre and uncanny, along with a commitment to writing for the voice and the stage. As a performer, he is active in the realms of new music, free improvisation, and jazz, and has worked with a wide variety of composers/performers including Bill Baird, Brian Baumbusch, Nicolas Collins, Sidney Corbett, Vinny Golia, George Lewis, Nicole Mitchell, Roscoe Mitchell, Bill Noertker, Zeena Parkins, Rent Romus, and William Winant. From 2019-20, he performed as the pianist for the legendary jazz unit the Art Ensemble of Chicago.


Tom's Place
3111 Deakin Street, Berkeley CA
Calendar: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/0ots0lvkk7164af1t953opr5o4%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
Directions: http://4-33.com/directions.html
Information: http://4-33.com/toms-place/index.html

Admission: donation. All proceeds go directly to the musicians.
(Bring Greenbacks! We have neither facilities nor the patience for processing checks, credit cards, venmo, paypal, zelle, foreign exchange, etc.)
No reserved seats.
Doors open at 7:00.

Cost: Free, donations accepted
Audio samples in which musicians at this event play:
Videos featuring musicians playing at this event
A montage of the free music group the Lords of Outland from their live presented as part of The Tenderloin Museum’s Sounds of the Tenderloin live music series at the Tenderloin National Forest in San Francisco July of 2022 Featuring Rent Romus on alto/soprano saxophones, Ray Schaeffer on bass, Anthony Flores on drums, and Philip Everett on