“Imagine Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed and Leo Kottke walking into a bar where Nina Simone is doing shots of Glenfiddich with David Gilmour.” -A.D. Amorosi

Like that only-one-of-its-kind duck-billed egg-laying mammal, Sylvia Platypus is a unique creature. Janet Bressler’s distinctive vocals, Bill Barone’s soulful guitar, the kick-ass rhythm section of Ruchama Bilenky and Tom Theurer, and Charlie Rutan’s inventive usage of highland and uilleann pipes, tin whistles and tenor sax combine elements of rock, folk, goth, glam, Celtic, and blues to create memorable songs with a sonic signature that rattles the cage of genre.

Tips are welcome! You can PayPal the band during the performance [or any time] at sylviaplatypus@sylviaplatypus.com

This is a virtual event. Direct link to the livestream: http://tinyurl.com/SylviaPlatypus

The Longest-running Free, All Ages Women's festival in Philly 

Womynsfest, booked & produced by Vitamin D Productions and now in its 24th year, is an annual festival of female musicians, singers, dancers, poets, filmmakers, speakers, visual artists, crafters, activists, and more. Beloved in West Philadelphia and beyond, Womynsfest represents homecoming for many seasoned performers while continually offering a platform for emerging artists. Past performers have ranged in age from 6 years old to 80+. Vitamin D Productions fosters an inclusive, welcoming environment for people of various backgrounds and viewpoints.

Featured this year: Mia Johnson, The Primaries, GhettoSongBird, Laura Cheadle, Morgan Pinkstone, Susan Rosetti, and more TBA

Creatives Chat Series 2024The Women's Coalition for Empowerment, Inc. in partnership with The Rotunda, presents the Creatives Chat Series 2024, a pop-up series for curated discussions merging creative industry topics, best practices, complimentary food, networking, and live music—an immersive experience for all.

Moderated by Shekhinah B., author of the Art Economic Empowerment Workbook, an artistic multi-hyphenate, arts administrator, Edutainer, and vocal performer.

Artists of all disciplines are invited to explore innovative approaches to creativity in a safe and non-judgmental environment. Join us for an enriching experience and be part of a community that values and encourages creativity in all forms.

Sunday, March 10, 2024 at 3pm - Women's Month

Sunday, May 5, 2024 at 3pm - Creative Business

Sunday, June 2, 2023 at 3pm - Black Music Month

Free | Open to the Public | Live Music | Free Food | Networking(Guest panelists will be announced soon....)

Please register at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/creatives-chat-series-2024-registration-775240664697

The Bigger Picture presents a 2-part FREE series!Spring into Grant Writing with Trish Downey, from Hopephl, will occur on Monday March 11 and Monday March 25. Both are 7-9pm.Get ready to dive into the world of grant writing for artists and learn valuable tips and tricks to help you spring into success!

Both workshops will be held virtually via Zoom!  

Register via the links below for this two-part series.

Spring Into Grant Writing For Artists: Part 1

Spring Into Grant Writing For Artists: Part 2

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. 

BOWERBIRD PRESENTSMAFFE KAFFEWS

Spectral Forces

Photo: Katharina Hauke

Bowerbird is pleased to present Berlin-based music maker MAFFE KAFFEWS at The Rotunda with opening set by Spectral Forces.

MAFFE KAFFEWS is a pioneering music maker who works live with space, data, things, and place to make new electroacoustic composition. Site, accessibility and the physical experience of this music has always been central to her approach and so she has also invented some unique interfaces – the sonic armchair, the sonic bed and a variety of sonic bikes which enable new paths into composition for makers, and ways in to listening for wide ranging audiences. In 2021 she developed the breathing Enviro Bike to enable riders to hear music made by the pollution of the air as they ride. Summer 2022 saw the Buzz Bike in street compositional research in Berlin, now ready to make new vibrational composition. Today, she is back live on stage with no laptop. Instead a new DIY instrument the Ripley, a noise filter system designed on alchemical discoveries made by G.Ripley, a 15th British alchemist, flanked by 2 processing ipads.

Spectral Forces, a Philadelphia based trio of Pete Dennis (bass), Julius Masri (drums), and Alex Smith (keys and words), brings triangulated octohedronal hysteria, wired nexus and timpanic atom bathe! the new wave in mystic sonic structure.

Admission is FREE/pay-what-you-wish

CLAY PRACTICE

RECENT EXPERIMENTS IN MOVEMENT/SOUND/MATERIAL FROM SHANNON BROOKS

____________________________

CREATED AND PERFORMED WITH:

​

AUBREY DONISCH

KIMYA IMANI JACKSON 

LU DONOVAN

A SMALL CHORUS EXPLORING SOUND AND MOVEMENT

​

AND A PILE OF CLAY

____________________________ 

3/16 at 7PM 

3/17 at 3PM

​

Suggestion donation $5-$30. pay at the door; absolutely no one turned away for lack of funds. RSVP HERE

IMAGINE A PILE OF CLAY IN THE MIDDLE OF A ROOM 

CLAY PRACTICE experiments in growing our trust in impulse, touch, and how it feels.

In this practice we move and sound with clay to experiment with our senses, and to  s t r e t c h out time into the space between each clay particle - into the time and space between each cell in our bodies -  to explore questions like:

​

·       What is there to feel? How does it feel? How do we know and take action through touch?

·       How do we feel into each other and ourselves? How do we connect to the memories, ghosts, and histories embedded in our environments, bodies, and imaginations? 

·       How do we erode? 

·       What are the edges of our capacity? What is burden? 

·       What is impossible? What do we believe?

·       What is excavated? What do we build? And who profits?

​

​

CLAY PRACTICE is deeply influenced by (Shannon's) personal experiences with low-vision/blindness, madness, and chronic illness.

More info 

PLEASE TAKE  ACCESSIBLE ENTRANCE INTO THE ROTUNDA. The accessible ramp entrance is on the right side of the building toward 41 street. Take the concrete path from Walnut Street and you'll find the ramp. If you're reading this you will probably be one of the few people who aren't shocked when they realize the not-accessible entrance is locked on purpose - that is the first part of the "show" - enjoy! 

​

This is a 100% masked event. Please bring your own masks! There will be a small box of K/N95 masks available.

CLAY PRACTICE

RECENT EXPERIMENTS IN MOVEMENT/SOUND/MATERIAL FROM SHANNON BROOKS

____________________________

CREATED AND PERFORMED WITH:

​

AUBREY DONISCH

KIMYA IMANI JACKSON 

LU DONOVAN

A SMALL CHORUS EXPLORING SOUND AND MOVEMENT

​

AND A PILE OF CLAY

____________________________ 

3/16 at 7PM 

3/17 at 3PM

​

Suggestion donation $5-$30. pay at the door; absolutely no one turned away for lack of funds. RSVP HERE

IMAGINE A PILE OF CLAY IN THE MIDDLE OF A ROOM 

CLAY PRACTICE experiments in growing our trust in impulse, touch, and how it feels.

In this practice we move and sound with clay to experiment with our senses, and to  s t r e t c h out time into the space between each clay particle - into the time and space between each cell in our bodies -  to explore questions like:

​

·       What is there to feel? How does it feel? How do we know and take action through touch?

·       How do we feel into each other and ourselves? How do we connect to the memories, ghosts, and histories embedded in our environments, bodies, and imaginations? 

·       How do we erode? 

·       What are the edges of our capacity? What is burden? 

·       What is impossible? What do we believe?

·       What is excavated? What do we build? And who profits?

​

​

CLAY PRACTICE is deeply influenced by (Shannon's) personal experiences with low-vision/blindness, madness, and chronic illness.

More info 

PLEASE TAKE  ACCESSIBLE ENTRANCE INTO THE ROTUNDA. The accessible ramp entrance is on the right side of the building toward 41 street. Take the concrete path from Walnut Street and you'll find the ramp. If you're reading this you will probably be one of the few people who aren't shocked when they realize the not-accessible entrance is locked on purpose - that is the first part of the "show" - enjoy! 

​

This is a 100% masked event. Please bring your own masks! There will be a small box of K/N95 masks available.

Join SPEC-TRUM on Tuesday, March 19th, 2024 at The Rotunda to see Jordan Ward with Reggie Becton!

The door opens at 6:30 pm, opening with Reggie Becton.

*Attendees with student tickets must show Penn ID at door*

Tickets are $7 for Penn students and $15 for the general public.

Grab your tickets before they are gone! Tickets can be purchased HERE

The Event Horizon concert series features Electronic, Avant Garde, and Experimental music along with the work of live video projection artists. The concerts are always free and open to all.

d/a73 impresario Wright Lagrone has said, “Beard Farm is both the best and the worst name for a band that d/a73 has everencountered”. Players Tom Bruce and Karl Fury play stringed instruments, hardware and software synthesizers, Linnstrumentcontrollers and iPads — all processed through laptop computers, thickness planers, and nuclear reactors. They combine jazz, classical, and a wide variety of ethnic and electronic music influences to create improvised journeys through expanded soundscapes. Spoken word, noise and notes come together to create a unique body of recordings. Karl Fury is a multi-instrumentalist and composer from central New Jersey. His musical background ranges from rock and blues to jazz-rock, world music, ambient, electronic and free improvisation.. Karl performed and recorded for several years in the world music duo Near East. He currently has releases with The Melting Transistor, The EquinoxProject, Quantum Elf and solo works under his own name and as Tars Obscura. He is often heard in well-known electro-music venues and on radio programs throughout the Northeast. Tom Bruce is a musician and sound artist living in Ithaca, New York. He works with a number of collaborators, including Karl Fury, James Spitznagel, Charles Shriner, and Rob Snyder. He has performed solo at the Northeast Electro-Music Festival, at the Mountain Skies festival in Asheville, NC, at MEME in Indianapolis, the Cosmic Crossings series in New Jersey, and at WPRB radio in Princeton, as well as at many events in the Ithaca area. In 2022, he and Rob Snyder took 4th place in an international competition for electronic music created via Internet collaboration. You can find out more than you want to know about him at https://linktr.ee/tbruce0

Ace Paradise is an Electronic Musician, DJ/Producer and Live Performer, who has been specializing in the production of many forms of Electronic Music since the early 1980′s. Ace, having a background of 45 + years in traditional music as a multi-instrumentalist, both acoustic and electronic, has merged his years of traditional music training, with his talents for both Electronic Music and as a seasoned DJ. He is known in many circles, as one of the early pioneers to develop techniques for combining and mixing several elements Live, using hardware synths, looping and samples and various DJ Gear, combined with live musical performance, enabling him to produce a spectacular and unforgettable live sound. More info, www.beatport.com/artist/ace-paradise/322442, www.djrankings.org/DJ-ACE_PARADISE/, soundcloud.com/ace-paradise, mixcloud.com/ace_paradise

KaLi embodies the transcendent power of time and change, producing a music of joy, courage, and hope. Undulating rhythms and patterns of melodies infused with the sensual side of harsh noise are core to their sound, rewarding the listener with inspiration and renewal. Bonnie Kane – saxophone, flute, electronics Tracy Lisk – drums A conductor of energy, dedicated improvisor, Bonnie Kane, is a pioneer in electronic processing for saxophone and flute. She is fascinated by the moment of creation and compelled by the focus required to be in that moment, because of the purity found there. To be a master improvisor, is to really tell the truth. Tracy Lisk is a drummer, painter, and curator who resides in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.   An internationally renown percussionist, her background in painting and Brazilian percussion inform the substance of her improvisations while maintaining a fluid, suspended continuity. Find Kane/Lisk (KaLi) Duo recordings @ – bonniekane.bandcamp.com

Admission is FREE

The Bigger Picture presents a 2-part FREE series!Spring into Grant Writing with Trish Downey, from Hopephl, will occur on Monday March 11 and Monday March 25. Both are 7-9pm.Get ready to dive into the world of grant writing for artists and learn valuable tips and tricks to help you spring into success!

Both workshops will be held virtually via Zoom!  

Register via the links below for this two-part series.

Spring Into Grant Writing For Artists: Part 1

Spring Into Grant Writing For Artists: Part 2

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. 

Come join us for a night of soulful music as we pay tribute to the legendary Erykah Badu. This event will take place on Fri March 29th at 8:00 PM. Doors open at 7 pm.

The tribute will be led by Jahwula Seapoe, a talented R&B/Neo-Soul vocalist, and her musical friends Tylar J, and Kito Starr. Together, they will perform a 1-hour set of some of Erykah Badu's greatest hits that have left an indelible mark on the world of music. You can expect to groove to some of her classics, such as "Didn't Cha Know" and "Bag Lady" throughout the night.

Don't miss out on this unforgettable experience. Grab your friends and get ready to be inspired by the one and only Erykah Badu.

Meet the Artists:

Jahwula Seapoe is an R&B/Neo-Soul vocalist and storyteller who performs captivating renditions of popular songs from the 70s to the present day. She is from West Philadelphia and has studied under various influential musicians in her community and at Temple University's Fox School of Business. Some of her mentors include Lisa Willson DeNolfo, Sherry Wilson Butler, and Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist Kate McGarry.

Event link: https://jahsingsbadu.eventbrite.com