Tenderloin Voices: Sounds of the TL at Glide (SF)

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Sounds of the TL at GLIDE: Tenderloin Voices, Destiny Muhammad, & Tiffany Austin

A free musical performance featuring top talents in Bay Area jazz, vocalist Tiffany Austin & Destiny Muhammad, plus Tenderloin Voices, an original song cycle by Larkin Street Youth Artists & Composer/Trumpeter Sarah Wilson.

Sunday, January 29, 2023

Doors Open: 1.45pm

Event Start: 2pm – 5pm

GLIDE Memorial Church, 330 Ellis St. SF, CA 94102

Entry is free. Registration is encouraged but not required. Please note that all attendees will need to wear a mask and provide proof of vaccine for entry.

Tenderloin Museum is honored to present its “Sounds of the Tenderloin” live music series in the Glide Memorial Church, a nexus for the history, community, and action that exemplify the Tenderloin’s potential for empowerment and transformation. Featuring an encore performance of the original song cycle Tenderloin Voices alongside sets by harpist Destiny Muhammad and vocalist Tiffany Austin, the program seeks to explore GLIDE’s core values by putting them into musical action.

Opening the afternoon performance, Tenderloin Voices brings personal stories written in early 2020 by formerly homeless Larkin Street Youth Service’s Art Program artists with writing instruction from Tenderloin writer Lyzette Wanzer. Larkin artists bring their personal stories to life through this musical performance sharing personal wisdom and insights. Composer and trumpeter Sarah Wilson wrote new and original pop, R&B, hip hop and gospel music with their text, which comprises the original song cycle performed by Larkin artists and Glide Ensemble singers alongside Wilson’s 7-piece jazz band in a musical performance.

The 12 songs that comprise Tenderloin Voices represent a practice and process of “truth telling” and are the fruit of many years of collaboration. After many twists and turns related to the pandemic, Tenderloin Voices premiered in August of 2022 at Dodge Alley as part of another “Sounds of the Tenderloin” program supporting the transformation of an impacted alleyway into a community space by and for its residents. Now, the project is being reprised in the venue for which this special collaboration was initially intended: the GLIDE Sanctuary.

The Tenderloin Voices ensemble assembled for this special performance at GLIDE features many luminaries in the Bay Area jazz scene–Tammy Hall (piano), Gary Brown (bass), John Schott (guitar), Jordan Glenn (drums), singers Tiffany Austin and Bryan Dyer–singers from the GLIDE Ensemble–Dennis Hersey, Errin Mixon, Cheryl Serame-Turk, Leah Tysee–as well as two of the projects writers from Larkin Street Youth Service’s Art Program: vocalist Cierra Murray and poet Leilani Sabugo.

The middle act is Destiny Muhammad, performing a solo set of harp and vocal music rooted in jazz and storytelling. A celebrated performer, band leader, composer, and producer, Muhammad is clearly informed by the great harpists in jazz, Dorothy Ashby and especially Alice Coltrane and her spiritualized sonic explorations; and yet the harp is an ancient instrument with lineage across cultures and history. In her music, Muhammad draws on that deep wellspring, pays homage to her more immediate Afro-harping predecessors in jazz, and manifests her own joyous sound and style that course with themes of self honor, community empowerment, and social justice.

Tiffany Austin, one of the featured vocalists in Tenderloin Voices and an accomplished recording artist, singer, and songwriter, closes out the program with a quartet set. Austin is a masterful vocalist who has assembled a repertoire of originals and songs from a cross-genre canon that frames African-American music as from and part of a “whole river of sound that’s sustained Black life in America since before the nation’s founding.” Blues, jazz, soul, gospel and more come together in Austin’s sound, testifying to her musical thesis that “whether the source is Sunday morning worship, Saturday night revelry, or an afternoon protest, African-American music is animated by a liberatory imperative.”

Sounds of the TL at GLIDE is a special engagement, bringing together artists and projects in a unique configuration and in community with the Tenderloin in one of the neighborhood’s most revered and empowering spaces. This powerful installment of the Tenderloin Museum’s “Sounds of the Tenderloin” series will animate the neighborhood’s undersung cultural history through live music and explores, deepens, and complicates participants’ understanding of Tenderloin history while supporting local working musicians and creating accessible cultural activities for. Learn more here and see past live music programs here.

This program is made possible thanks to a grant from Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. Additional support for Tenderloin Voices provided by the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Fleishhacker Foundation, and Phyllis Lusher for residency support.

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.