Joseph Keckler, Mala Forma Dance, Mystery Cave, SD New Verbal Workshop
Music, Dance, Performance
Intervals is a new arts and performance event space in the heart of Little Italy. Founder and director Preston Swirnoff said this first official show is a great indicator of the multidisciplinary, feast-for-the-senses art practice he envisions for the space — something he wants to keep approachable.
"I really like occupying that middle ground between a performance that may have challenging aspects to it, but it has everything from dance — which is really intuitive and really easy to enjoy — electronic music and someone like Joseph (Keckler) who is a great singer-songwriter; he did an NPR Tiny Desk that was really popular and he's done a lot of theater. So I think anyone who enjoys the performing arts will have something that they can get out of this show," Swirnoff said.
Keckler is a New York-based opera composer and songwriter who also does performance art and videos. The Tiny Desk concert is equal parts absurd, mesmerizing and a grandiose display of talent.
Also performing is a collaboration between binational dance troupe Mala Forma Dance, led by Justin Morrison and improvisational music ensemble Everything Will Be Okay. San Diego-based Mystery Cave will perform an electronic music set, and a new experimental vocal choir, San Diego New Verbal Workshop will perform an avant garde piece, British composer Cornelius Cardew's "The Great Learning, Paragraph 7."
Swirnoff said it's exciting to see a group taking on projects that sprang out of the 1960s and '70s avant garde movements, particularly Cardew's work.
"He was someone that made these pieces for vocal choir that were meant to be kind of like a way to include non-musicians and non-trained singers and a community choir. That was kind of his vision. And this piece is based on the text of Confucius that was translated by Ezra Pound," he said.
Details: 7 p.m. on Saturday, Apr. 29. Intervals, 998 W. Juniper St., Little Italy. $10 suggested donation at the door.
'Well, Well, Well': Glen Wilson, June Edmonds and April Banks
Visual art
BFree Studio in La Jolla will hold an opening reception for their new exhibit, "Well, Well, Well," featuring the work of three Los Angeles-based artists.
You may be familiar with June Edmonds' mural on Girard in La Jolla, "Ebony on Draper and Girard," informed by the life and properties of Henrietta VanHorn-DeBose, one of the first Black women to settle in La Jolla in the late 1800s. Her paintings in the exhibition use similar round, curving, colorful stripes, expressing ideas of meditation as well as layered identities.
Photographer Glen Wilson will show a set of photographs woven directly onto fragments of chain-link fencing. The series is called "GateKeeping."
April Banks' broad-ranging work includes sculptural pieces that draw on ancestry and memory. One piece is a set of plaster impressions of an imaginary, heirloom violin Banks had conjured into her own childhood. Another, a stained glass window informed by lineage.
Details: On view through June 10. Opening reception is 5-7 p.m. Apr. 29. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. 7857 Girard Ave., La Jolla. Free.
LITVAKdance: Terrain
Dance
LITVAKdance returns for their spring showcase, this time to UC San Diego's campus, showcasing new choreography inspired by wild spaces and nature by artistic director Sadie Weinberg along with Chuck Wilt, Patricia Sandback, sol de la rosa and Ido Gidron.
Bonus: On LITVAK's Instagram, they've posted some beautifully filmed clips of Chuck Wilt's "Terrain" choreography from natural spaces across the county.
Details: Four performances. 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday, Apr. 29; and 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. Sunday, Apr. 30. Molli and Arthur Wagner Dance Building, 9155 Mandell Weiss Lane, UC San Diego.
Side trip: while you're on the UC San Diego campus, be sure to visit "KAHNOP • TO TELL A STORY," the latest installment in the Stuart Art Collection. The engraved concrete 800 ft walkway features a series of fragmented texts and poetry, and will be celebrated on Saturday afternoon from 2-4 p.m. The piece is adjacent to the Blue Line trolley stop on campus and the Epstein Family Amphitheater.
Adams Avenue Unplugged
Music
More than 60 bands take over the bars, restaurants and cafes of Adams Ave. stretching from University Heights to Kensington this Saturday in the free Adams Avenue Unplugged festival.
Other than the sold-out headliner Dave Alvin, all performances are free.
A handful of performances on my radar: Finnegan Blue plays the Ska Bar at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.; Greg Theilmann plays Lestat's at 6 p.m.; Gregory Page plays the Normal Heights United Church at 1:15 p.m.; Israel Maldonado plays Rosie O'Grady's at noon and Cantina Mayahuel at 8 p.m.; Julia Sage plays Ponce's at 6 p.m.; Kahlil Nash plays AC Lounge at 5 p.m.; Shelbi Bennett and Friends play Lestat's at 9 p.m.; and Whiskey and Burlap play Smitty's Service at 4:30 p.m. Find the full lineup here, or a mapped out timeline here.
Details: Noon to 10 p.m. on Saturday, Apr. 29. Adams Ave., Normal Heights. Free.
Little Italy ArtWalk
Visual art, Music, Performance
The 39th annual ArtWalk will be held in Little Italy on Saturday and Sunday, with 250 visual artists displaying their art. In addition to fine art, there'll be a "bike art" auction to benefit the arts education nonprofit ArtReach; a "KidsWalk" with hands-on artmaking; and a packed live music schedule.
The best way to get to Little Italy is to take the Green Line trolley, and MTS is giving away a limited number of free trolley passes for ArtWalk attendees. Details here.
Details: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. India St. between Grape St. and Beech St., Little Italy. Free.
More weekend arts events we're covering
Check out KPBS reporter Beth Accomando's Without Walls (WOW) Fest preview here. On my to-do list at WOW Fest: "59 Acres," an interactive recording booth; Close-Act Theatre's larger-than-life "Birdmen"; Disco Riot's wholly original kite-flying-plus-dance combo, "Choreo & Fly"; Christopher Cichocki's genre-bending DJ set performance-slash-installation "Circular Dimensions"; King Britt and Friends; and Blindspot Collective's "Salty Water." Though there's so much experimental theater and performance, you can't go wrong.
Attention book lovers: the sixth annual San Diego Book Crawl is back and bigger than ever, with 13 participating indie bookstores. I spoke to both of the new additions and a few other Book Crawl organizers. Check out my feature here, which includes a map and hours for each shop. Plus, it runs through Monday, so if you're feeling overwhelmed about everything going on this weekend, you can save a little bit of fun for after everything else is already wrapped.
A new exhibit opened at the Comic-Con Museum this week, "Trino's World," celebrating one of Mexico's most popular cartoonists, José Trinidad Camacho, aka Trino.
