Philly’s longest-running free, all-ages Womyn’s Festival celebrates 25 years!

3pm-9pm

Womynsfest, booked and produced by Vitamin D Productions, is an annual fest of womyn musicians, singers, dancers, poets, filmmakers, speakers, visual artists and crafters of all ages and 

from all walks of life. The festival is a homecoming for seasoned performers while showcasing emerging artists. 

This year features:

Mia JohnsonVitamin D and Lisa SunshineThe Primaries

Jeannie & HarryCheryl CJ (poetry)Deb Carrier (poetry)GhettoSongBirdLaura Cheadle & The GirlsPeggy BrennanAutumnJoanne/Morgan (comedy skit)Orion SunShorn Marshall 

and more to be announced!

Admission is FREE

Fire Museum Presents: Paolo Angeli:

Sardinian musician Paolo Angeli’s professional career was spent deep in the avant garde, exploring post-rock, experimental opera, and more. His style was influenced heavily by that of guitarist Giovanni Scanu, who was a major proponent of the classic Sardinian canto a chitarra style. The combination of inputs inspired Angeli to create his own instrument: an 18-stringed hybrid of guitar, baritone, violoncello, and drums, adorned with hammers, pedals, and even propellers operating at various speeds. Working closely with craftsman Francesco Concas, Angeli created an instrument that enables an altogether new type of performance combining, referencing, and transcending free jazz, folk noise, and minimal pop.

"Paulo Angeli is a musical conjurer, an artist whose imaginative leaps defy gravity. A composer, ethnomusicologist and instrument builder who draws on his deep knowledge of traditional Sardinian music, he inhabits a timeless zone as a soil-rooted master and brash experimentalist. While suffused with Mediterranean cadences, Angeli’s original pieces encompass flamenco, jazz, Baroque, post-rock and new music. He plays a prepared Sardinian guitar of his own invention, a fantastical 18-string hybrid combining elements of guitar, cello and drums.

A feast for the eyes as well as the ears, Angeli in full flight is an astounding sight, as he bows, strikes, hammers, plucks and strums an instrument with strings going in all directions and foot-pedal-controlled motorized propellers. With sympathetic strings creating shimmering drones, he adjusts tunings on the fly to create exquisitely lapidary, orchestral music using electronic effects in real time (he eschews loopers, creating every sound in the moment).

It’s not surprising that this singular musician has improvised and collaborated with masters such as Pat Metheny, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, Zeena Parkins, and Phillip Greenlief. Angeli’s music may be unclassifiable, but it takes no expertise to recognize its strange and extravagant beauty"-SF Jazz

Admission is FREE; donations greatly appreciated. Advance registration recommended. Register HERE

Bowerbird is pleased to present Nathan Davis in a solo performance at The Rotunda.

Finding narrative in natural processes and acoustic phenomena, Nathan Davis’s solo work elucidates essential characters of instruments and objects. This concert presents his recent work with the bowed psaltery alongside pieces for river stones and amplified computer, supported by and immersive video projections.

“It is beautiful, haunting, immersive. A meditative sound world to live in for a time and think about once you’ve left… In Davis’ hands, the psaltery soars and twangs, pings and croons. Gentle and meditative at one moment, sharp and melancholy the next, evoking fluid shapes and celestial voices moving together through a complex, slowly shifting soundscape. It is both of this world and somehow beyond it.” – Megan Westberg – STRINGS Magazine

Nathan Davis “writes music that deals deftly and poetically with timbre and sonority” (NY Times). His opera/ballet “Hagoromo” was produced by American Opera Projects and premiered at the BAM Next Wave Festival with the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, choreographer David Neumann, and dancers Wendy Whelan, and Jock Soto. Lincoln Center presented the premiere of “Bells”, a site-specific work for ensemble, multi-channel audio, and live broadcast to audience members’ mobile phones.

Nathan received other commissions from GMEM and Ensemble CBarré (Marseille), FringeArts and the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, Donaueschinger Musiktage (Germany), Yarn/Wire, Claire Chase, Ekmeles, Miller Theatre, Ojai Music Festival, the Calder Quartet, and Third Coast Percussion, with premieres at Tanglewood, Park Avenue Armory, Guggenheim Museum, and Carnegie Hall. His music has been released on Starkland, Tundra, New Focus, Bridge, Infrequent Seams, and Sono Luminus.

An Aaron Copland Fellow at the Bogliasco Foundation, Davis received awards and fellowships from the Camargo Foundation, New Music USA, NYSCA, Meet The Composer, Fromm Foundation, Jerome Foundation, American Music Center, MATA, and ASCAP. He and Phyllis Chen won an NY Innovative Theater Award for their score to Sylvia Milo’s play “The Other Mozart”.

An active percussionist and multi-instrumentalist, Nathan has premiered hundreds of works by luminaries and by emerging composers, and he appeared as a concerto soloist on hammered dulcimer with the Seattle Symphony, Tokyo Symphony, and Nagoya Philharmonic. Davis holds degrees in composition and in percussion from Rice, Yale, and the Rotterdams Conservatorium on a Fulbright Fellowship, and he teaches composition and electronic music at The New School. www.nathandavis.com

Admission is FREE/pay-what-you-wish. Registration is not required but it is appreciated. Please register HERE