Crosscurrents

The smoky voice you’re here now belongs to Bay Area singer Liz Kennedy. She’s been writing music since she was 12, and now fifty years later, she says, “I’m old enough to have found some style.”

Liz Kennedy is having an album release party on Saturday, July 27th at the Fenix Bar on 4th Street in San Rafael. Music starts about 6:30pm.

The east side story

I’m on the east side of Alameda Island, standing in mud in front of a storm drain that empties out into San Leandro Bay. There’s a stretch of homes right on the shoreline looking out at estuaries, the Oakland Airport, and Coliseum. The waterline isn’t quite at my feet right now, but in less than a century I’d likely be standing in water up to my shoulders.

Chris Black is a small woman. She’s five-foot-one and weighs just over a hundred pounds. But don’t let her size fool you. In a tank top that reveals well-muscled arms, and executing a punishing series of push-up-like movements, Black is looking pretty tough. In fact, “Tough” is the name of the dancer and choreographer’s newest piece. It’s a one-woman-show inspired by turn-of-the-century bare knuckle boxing champ John L. Sullivan, whose famous catchphrase went: “My name is John L. Sullivan, and I can lick any sonofabitch in the house.”

What Alameda is doing to deal with rising sea levels, imagining life in the Bay Area after the next big earthquake, a small dancer in the shoes of a big boxer, and local musicians The Quartet San Francisco.

The sounds you’re hearing are by the Quartet San Francisco. They aren’t your typical chamber quartet. As they say, “When the music says swing, we swing. When the music says groove, we groove.”

The Quartet San Francisco might be swinging and grooving on Sunday, July 27th; that’s when they open for Rufus Wainwright at the Stern Grove Festival in -- where else -- San Francisco’s Stern Grove. Music starts at 2:00pm, but everyone knows to get there much earlier!