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The first edition of San Francisco's one and only Hornucopia Festival kicks off tonight. The festival squishes "over 35 horn- and brass-fueled bands" into a couple of dozen shows over two weeks, featuring mostly local talent.
We are particularly partial to bands featuring the trumpet, our assigned instrument in 5th-grade band. We remember thinking to our small selves, "it's only got three buttons... how hard could it be?"
These people make it look easy. Here are a couple of our favorite trumpeters in the lineup (in chronological order):
Local trumpet superstar Frank London leads his SF Klezmer Brass Allstars at Café du Nord this Friday, September 5th.
Cool Sarah Wilson offers a Brass Tonic -- "power brass jazz folk song tonic for the masses" -- at the deYoung Museum at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, September 7th (free!).
Hard-working Darren Johnston (who also appears with Sarah Wilson's Brass Tonic) fronts the Nice Guy Trio at the Red Poppy Art House on Friday, September 9th.
Brilliant Ara Anderson, who can be heard on a couple of Tom Waits records, plays with Iron + the Albatross at the Freight and Salvage on September 10th.
Notorious Freddie Price of Rube Waddell blows his horn ballsando (a rarely-achieved dynamic level equal to 25 fortissimos) on Saturday the 13th at the Café du Nord. Price also lends his vocal chords to Lord Loves a Working Man on Wednesday the 9th at the Elbo Room.
This last one is not actually on the bill, but proves Hornucopia impresario Sol Crawford's maxim that "if you throw a stick at any genre of music, you'll hit a horn": Dick Dale, the legendary King of the Surf Guitar, who often lays down his mighty axe in favor of the trumpet. Think good thoughts for the King of the Surf Trumpet; he's recovering from chemo.
Recommended get-stoked activity for the Hornucopia Festival: watch the opening sequence of Kusturiča's 1995 film Underground, and rediscover the joys of hiring a brass brand to run behind you as you ride a mule cart through the town in the middle of the night, with your best friend beside you, drinking and shooting guns into the air. As part of Hornucopia, Kusturiča's Black Cat, White Cat screens at Artist's Television Access on Tuesday, September 9th.
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For what it's worth, I've documented many of these amazing local musicians via an online documentary archival project I've been doing for more than two years now. There are literally hundreds of photos, videos, and one-of-a-kind live audio recordings on my website that relate to the truely amazing -- and often under-appreciated -- brass sounds coming from the SF scene. So, sorry for the shameless plug, but this project is really for the benefit of the musicians and the scene, so if you like this kind of music, you should check out the archive sometime here:
http://www.BayTaper.com