San Diego concert picks: Adams Avenue Unplugged with ‘Recordially Yours, Lou Curtiss’ screening; Luciana Souza and Mark Guiliana
The free Saturday festival on Adams Avenue will feature 70 bands and solo artists, including singer-songwriters Jack Tempchin, Gregory Page and Sara Petite, plus a duo featuring Chris Torres and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ alum Ron Blair.
Adams Avenue Unplugged festival and ‘Recordially Yours, Lou Curtiss’ film screening, concert and discussion
Lights! Action! Music!
It’s time for the 2024 edition of Adams Avenue Unplugged, which in 2012 succeeded the then-18-year-old Adams Avenue Roots Festival.
Saturday’s noon-to-midnight edition will feature 70 bands and solo artists, including 2019 Songwriters Hall of Fame honoree Jack Tempchin.
Jack Tempchin will be in very elite company when he is inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in June in New York City.
They will perform at 19 indoor and two outdoor venues across two miles of Adams Avenue between Kensington and University Heights, with the majority of them in Normal Heights. Twelve of those venues are open to all ages; 10 of them are 21-and-up. Admission is free to all but two performances.
The roster of artists includes slide-guitar great Fred Heath, award-winning troubadours Gregory Page and Sara Petite, the blues-rocking Chickebone Slim & The Biscuits and Lady Dottie & The Diamonds, and the duo of Chris Torres and Ron Blair (the latter of whom was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2002 as a member of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers).
Four of the performances will be in the Normal Heights United Methodist Church, which Friday night hosts the April edition of the church’s monthly Songwriter Sanctuary concert series.
The four Adams Unplugged artists playing Saturday in the church include Tempchin, the Blair/Torres duo, Yale Strom & Hot Pstromi — all free of charge — and the California Guitar Trio, whose performance has a $25 ticket price.
The one other ticketed event, featuring Tempchin, Gregory Page and Patty Hall, takes place at 7 p.m. Friday night in the Adams Avenue Theater. Their 40-minute performance precedes a screening of “Recordially Yours, Lou Curtiss,” which was co-produced by Hot Pstromi’s Yale Strom and Elizabeth Schwartz.
“Recordially Yours, Lou Curitiss’ is a labor-of-love documentary by the husband-and-wife team of Yale Strom and Elizabeth Schwartz about the founder of the San Diego Folk Festival and Folk Arts Rare Records. It premieres Friday at downtown’s Digital Gym.
It profiles roots-music champion Curtiss, who founded the Adams Avenue Roots Festival and San Diego Folk Festival, ran Folk Arts Rare Records and was a key mentor to everyone from Tempchin, Petite and Page to Tom Waits, AJ Croce and Mojo Nixon.
The film includes interviews with Tempchin, Page, Hall, Croce, Nixon and others, including — full disclosure — this writer. After the screening, Strom, Tempchin and Page will discuss Curtiss’ legacy with the audience.
7 p.m. Friday for film and concert, Adams Avenue Theater, 3325 Adams Ave., Normal Heights, $10. Festival is Noon to midnight Saturday at 21 restaurants, bars and cafes along Adams Avenue, from the Kensington Cafe in Kensington to Dia Del Cafe in University Heights, with a majority of the venues in Normal Heights. All performances free except California Guitar Trio ($25), which performs 7 p.m. Saturday at the Normal Heights United Church, 4650 Mansfield St. Tickets for Saturday’s 21-and-up VIP Beer & Food package are $24. adamsavenuebusiness.com/event-info-adams-avenue-unplugged
Luciana Souza & Trio Corrente
The classic songs of Brazil’s Antônio Carlos Jobim, Dori Caymmi, Djavan Paulinho da Viola and others are celebrated and extended by vocal standout Luciana Souza and São Paulo’s Trio Corrente, who also write their own material.
Souza and the trio have each won individual Grammy Awards. Their work together may also merit Grammy consideration.
Leonard Cohen. Emily Dickinson. Edna St. Vincent Millay. “Smoke on the Water?”
Souza’s past collaborators range from Herbie Hancock, Paul Simon, Bobby McFerrin and Steely Dan’s Walter Becker to opera star Dawn Upshaw, David Bowie saxophonist Donny McCaslin, the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet and the Atlanta Symphony Chorus and Orchestra.
She is the daughter of veteran bossa-nova singer Walter Santos and the goddaughter of visionary Brazilian composer and band leader Hermeto Pascoal, whose intensely challenging, genre-leaping music Souza began to master while still in her teens.
She has not performed in San Diego before with Trio Corrente. Given the uniformly high quality of her previous area appearances under the auspices of the Athenaeum in La Jolla, her Friday concert there with the group should be a memorable one.
7:30 p.m. Friday. Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, 1004 Wall St., La Jolla. $45-$50. ljathenaeum.org
Mark Guiliana
Can music fans be in two places at once? Some will wish this was possible when drum dynamo Mark Guiliana performs Friday night at UC San Diego at almost exactly the same time Luciana Souza sings at the nearby Athenaeum.
While he has worked with such jazz luminaries as Brad Mehldau, Dave Douglas and Gretchen Parlato, Guiliana is best known to rock fans for his superb playing on David Bowie’s final album, “Blackstar.” Reggae fans may recognize him for his work with Matisyahu, while he is familiar to neo-soul fans for his collaborations with Meshell Ndegeocello.
Guiliana is the leader of two very different bands, a jazz quartet and the electronica-fueled Beat Music. His concert here will debut his new trio with Beat Music keyboardist/programmer Nicholas Semrad and DJ/producer John Joshua.
8 p.m. Friday.. The Loft at UC San Diego, 3151 Matthews Lane, La Jolla. $22. theloft.ucsd.edu/shows
george.varga@sduniontribune.com
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