Art in Context: Music and Photography

In November, Chez Mana launches Art in Context, a series of invitation-only events hosted at small and convivial settings.

The first is scheduled for November 7^th and features one of the Bay Area’s hottest songwriters, Deborah Crooks, performing her own compositions based on blues, folk and contemporary influences, backed by her accomplished trio.

“…a more diverse take on Americana with a distinctly female tone, and quite charming.” —East Bay Express

Superflows, a photo exhibit by the French artist Pierrick Gaumé, will be on display.

Songwriter/recording artist Deborah Crooks is an intimate and edgy artist whose lyric-driven and soul-wise music draws on folk, rock, Americana and the blues.  Deborah’s lyrics are honed by a lifetime of writing as well as world travel, and she is an active member of the San Francisco songwriting and arts scene, leading many events and initiatives.  Deborah’s performance and recording credits include an appearance at the 2006 Millennium Music Conference, the RockerGirl Magazine Music Convention,  Harmony Festival, 2009’s California Music Fest as well as MacWorld 2010 and three EP’s and a full-length CD “Adding Water to the Ashes.”  For Art in Context, she’ll perform a special acoustic set with her band including strings, percussion and guitar.

Tatiana Ecoiffier is balancing her life between her two passions, music and biology. Originally from France, she was classically trained as a violist at the conservatory of Strasbourg. She played in several symphonic orchestras as well a chamber music group before moving to Boston in 2006 to finish her master’s degree in biotechnology at Harvard. Now living in Berkeley, she is completing her PhD in vision science and finding her musical inspiration while accompanying several talented Bay Area artists. She has been playing with Deborah Crooks since they recorded “It’s All Up to You” last January.

Kwame Copeland first picked up a guitar as a teenager growing up in Wyoming and has written and played music ever since. In addition to writing and playing bass and guitar for a variety of notable Bay Area projects that have included The Straw Coyotes, Two Headed Turtle, Adrian West Band, Grace Woods as well as Deborah Crooks, he currently fronts his own Kwame Copeland Band.

Mike Stevens began playing drums at the age of nine and has played professionally since he was fifteen. Mike quickly became first-call sub for many of Eastern Connecticut’s music ensembles and was the resident drummer for several rock and jazz groups in the area. Since moving to the Bay Area, he’s performed and recorded with a number of local bands.

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Pierrick Gaumé’s Quest

I remember the foggy autumn weather when I took this photograph. Shady palm trees were going wild in the wind.

Between Castro and the Mission district in San Francisco, my eyes were wandering over the hoods of the cars. I could see warped buildings and tree limbs that looked like moving ghosts and animals until a Jaguar effigy caught my attention.

In a colorless jungle, this animal’s muscular shine looked like a call of the wild, a leap into more intrigue.

With their feeling of vertigo à la Hitchcock, Pierrick Gaumé’s Superflows offer organic and exploded visions of today’s cities. Their colors wind like hot lava through fractal, crystallized shapes that still reflect actual buildings.

Since 2007, Gaumé has been capturing these furtive reflections in French and American cities. His photographs freeze accidental collisions of sunbeams, facades and four-wheeled mirrors. The distortions are natural phenomena resulting from the intersection of architectural and streamline shapes on cars’ shiny complex volumes.

For information on future events join http://www.facebook.com/chezmana