http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmvdalKvnuA

Ava Mendoza Trio will perform at the opening party for “Gender Specific Take It Or Leave It” a group show at Smith-Andersen Gallery in Palo Alto, Saturday, September 8, 2012, at approximately 4 p.m. The event overall is listed as from 3 to 7 p.m, with the music slated as two 45s and a break.

The art show features work by 28 artists including Terry Acebo Davis (my girlfriend), Kathryn Kain, Hung Liu, Kara Walker, Kara Maria, Kathy Aoki, Vanessa Blaikie, Stephanie Sanchez, Inga Infante and Helen Frankenthaler. The gallery is at 440 Pepper Street in Palo Alto, near the giant Fletcher Benton at Page Mill and El Camino; info (650) 328-7762.

Earthwise Productions (my company) is producing the entertainment segment of the party. This is perhaps the fourth time Paula Kirkeby and I have collaborated to augment her considerable curatorial offerings with suitable live music/art utterances and ritual.

I met Ava Mendoza at the Make Out Room at a showcase organized by Lisa Mezzacappa in June of 2009. I met her again about a year ago when she played in a rock band at the Sunset Magazine fair; I could hear the music from our North Palo Alto home and was drawn to the fair as if the bass and guitar lines were the voices of syrens. Truthfully I didn’t recognize Ava in that band (The Salmonellas) until I approached her after her set. But it’s true her music drew me in from blocks away.

Ava recently performed at the prestigious New York listening room, The Stone. (see video above). I believe her Palo Alto performance features the same trio.Ava Mendoza- guitar
Dominique Leone- bass synth
Nick Tamburro- drum.

She and Nick have announced on new release on a label called Weird Forest.

I’d like to think that performing at this gallery party, surrounded by amazing art and interesting people — some of the artists and their fans and collectors and friends — makes the Ava hit more than mere background music, but we will have to see about that. It underscores the fact that Palo Alto lacks a proper music venue. Ava’s group performs that evening at The Starry Plough bar in Berkeley, on a bill with Scott Amendola and Phillip Greenlief’s PG13 — a pretty good hit by Bay Area standards.

On the other hand, and excuse the digression, I am not a fan of putting jazz and new music into giant institutional halls and charging people $40 to $100 or more; that’s “classical” not jazz.

Paula Kirkeby does not have to throw down for top drawer musicians to make her openings fly but she does it because she sees the analogy between composers/performers like Ava Mendoza and the visual artists with whom she works. And certainly the artists in residence at Smith Andersen Editions have made good use of the boom box while they print there. I am also reminded here of collaborations like Bill Frisell’s compositions in reaction to Gerhard Richter, or Elmer Bischoff’s band, or Nathan Oliveira’s friendship with Stan Getz.

If Ava Mendoza literally steals the show Sept. 8 there will be a small group of new converts who follow her from Palo Alto to Berkeley for her 9 pm hit there; the Plough also has burgers, darts and a collection of political posters.