Saturday, November 26, 2022
9pm doors / 10pm sound
Tickets $15 (discounted or free for members)
Students can email us for a discounted ticket
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Percussion instruments are among the earliest instruments in human history. At the very least, they are keepers of time, but they can achieve far more and transport us into a realm beyond music.

As a fierce DJ, Nkisi channels 160+bpm kick drums, metallic hectic percussions, and hypnotizes the dance floor into a ritualistic transcendental space.

On the occasion of the Drum Listens to Heart exhibition at The Wattis Institute, Nkisi performs a live set at The Lab.

Nkisi produces intense, powerful club tracks equally influenced by African polyrhythms, hardcore techno, and '70s Italian horror films. The London-based musician and visual artist is one of the co-founders of NON Worldwide, a collective of experimental artists from across the African diaspora. In 2020, Nkisi's new label INITIATION emerges with INT001, a 3 track EP melting rhythmic noise strategies with secret drum languages from Ancient Kongo traditions.

Drum Listens to Heart is curated by Anthony Huberman and organized by Diego Villalobos, with assistance by Katherine Jemima Hamilton and Meghan Smith.

Grace Cathedral, 1100 California St, San Francisco, CA 94108
Saturday, November 19, 2022
7pm doors / 8pm show
Tickets $20 (discounted or free for members)
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Kara-Lis Coverdale is most well known for her work in electronics, but her performance at Grace Cathedral will draw from over a decade of her employment by the church as organist, while fully embracing the non-compromising artistic presence Coverdale is known for, drawing sounds out of the organ that re-frame the instrument and its repertoire with distinctive approaches to tactility, register, and shadow form. She will perform new work titled “State, Form, Interconnectivity,” from her ongoing specialized repertoire in transcendence, embodiment, and transcription of emotion.

Kara-Lis is a Canadian born composer, musician, and producer with Estonian heritage. She began studying piano with the Royal Conservatory of Music at 5 and has held positions as organist, choir and music directors across Canada since 13. Coverdale completed degrees in musicology and composition, writing a Masters thesis on the construction of timbral realism in mediated and recorded music, also studying composition, media and piano. She is recipient of Canada’s “Promising Young Artist” Award presented by Ann Southam, and has held residencies with GRM Paris, EMS Stockholm, FUGA Zaragoza, and more. Kara-Lis has performed live all over the world at institutions such as The Barbican, Theatre du Chatelet, AGO, MAC Montreal, Teatro Circo, Kraftwerk, and Elbphilharmonie.

Friday, November 11, 2022
7:30pm doors / 8pm show
Artist Price $15
General Admission $25 (discounted or free for members)
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(E)cho (Q)ueue is an experimental multimedia performance piece that reinforces techno music as an inherently Black American invention by examining its lineage and synthesizing Afro-Diasporic rhythmic and tonal forms with movement. Through visual projections, choreography, and original music composed by Hewett’s moniker, Madre Guía, (E)cho (Q)ueue aims to speak to the cultural, social, and spiritual impact of Black cultural production by elevating its past, present, and future. Joining her will be two Bay Area powerhouses Audrey Johnson and Laila Shabazz, with creative support from Abdoulie Jallow and Joslynn Mathis-Reed. (E)cho (Q)ueue is supported by the Zellerbach Family Foundation, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Dancers’ Group, and FACT/SF.

Stephanie Hewett (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist from the Bronx, New York (Lenapehoking territory) currently residing in Oakland, CA (Ohlone-Chochenyo territory). She is a graduate of Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and the Performing Arts in New York City and has studied at the Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London. They hold an MFA in Dance Studies and use both music and movement to dream into new forms of Black & Queer liberation rooted in spiritual, physical, and sonic defense. Hewett DJ's and produces electronic music under the moniker, Madre Guía. Their Afro-Caribbean roots guide them towards polyrhythmic potentialites of intergenerational healing.

Audio description by Gravity Access Services will be provided. For more information about this service please visit www.jesscurtisgravity.org/access

Saturday, November 5, 2022
8pm doors / 8:30pm show
Tickets $25 (discounted or free for members)
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This performance will take place at the former Theater Rhino, down the hall from The Lab. The doors will close at 8:30pm, no late entries allowed.

Brontez Purnell is an acclaimed writer (100 Boyfriends published by MCDxFSG Originals) and dancer (Brontez Purnell Dance Company) whose writing rises from movement and whose dancing is often steeped in language. His latest dance solo Invisible Trial – choreographed by Larry Arrington with dramaturgy by Jeremy O. Harris – is loosely based on the Sylvia Plath short Story Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams The protagonist, a receptionist at a mental health clinic, acts as a sort of medium for the living as he secretly records the dreams, fears, and anxieties of those he encounters. His boss is the God of Anxiety himself who is keeping tabs on the protagonist snooping. Through dance, text, and installation, Invisible Trial attempts to name those fears and fantasies around patriarchal inheritance, shadow work being done against us, and the burning question: are we ever the sole agents of our own fate?

Purnell has been described as "a restless, prolific artist in almost every conceivable genre" (The New York Times). Invisible Trial – Purnell's first evening-length dance solo piece – has been on the artist's mind for over a decade. He began dancing in contemporary Haitian and West African companies and in his 20s was part of the electroclash queer dance band Gravy Train!!!, before devoting himself to studying dance and founding the Brontez Purnell Dance Company (which builds works that combine punk rock subversion and free jazz improvisation in a company comprising movers and artists of all disciplines) in 2010.

For his 2017 commission at The Lab, Brontez Purnell created Unstoppable Feat, The Dances of Ed Mock, a multimedia project that allowed artists and audiences to actively engage with the legacy of the late San Francisco postmodern choreographer.

Friday, November 4, 2022
7pm doors / 7:30pm reading
Free

Celebrate the release of two new books from Roof Books by Bay Area poets, Jean Day & Jacob Kahn. Hosted by Roof Books Managing Editor, Lonely Christopher, Day will be reading from her latest collection, The Night Before the Day On Which, and Kahn from his debut collection, Mine Eclogue.

Jean Day is a poet, academic editor, and (in recent years) union activist whose involvement in the San Francisco Bay Area poetry scene spans more than four decades. Starting out as a book-wrapper/clerk for Small Press Distribution (and later as its director), she has since worked in various aspects of nonprofit publishing. She is the author of many collections of poetry, including Late Human (Ugly Duckling, 2021), The Triumph of Life (Insurance Editions, 2018), and Daydream (Litmus, 2017). She lives in Berkeley.

Jacob Kahn is a poet and editor living in Oakland, CA. He is the author of the chapbooks A Is For Aegis (DoubleCross Press, 2022) and Mine Eclogue (Dirty Swan Projects, 2019), and A Circuit of Yields (Wolfman Books, 2014). From 2016-20, he was a managing editor, curator, and bookseller at Wolfman Books, a bookstore, small press, and community arts hub in downtown Oakland. He is an editor of the poetry chapbook press, Eyelet Press, and reading series, Islet, which he cofounded with Sophia Dahlin in 2019. He works as a freelance grant writer and copyeditor, as well as at the Berkeley Public Library.