Events
A Salute to the Joy of Making Music
Community Music Center’s Spring Gala
Monday, May 13 at SFJAZZ
Cost:
$300 for Platinum Seating
$200 for Gold Seating
$120 for Friends Seating
San Francisco’s hottest new venue, SFJAZZ, will be the site of Community Music Center’s grandest party of the year — A Salute to the Joy of Making Music, on Monday, May 13th from 6:30-9:30pm. The evening’s headliner will be Mark Inouye, San Francisco Symphony’s brilliant principal trumpet who moonlights as one of the Bay Area’s most original jazz voices with his quartet The Unit. Master of Ceremonies will be five-time Grammy nominated percussionist and former CMC faculty member, John Santos.
The event will honor the Chiu Family, one of San Francisco’s leading families of music and philanthropy. Yanek Chiu, a highly regarded surgeon and member of the SF Symphony board, and his wife Mary, a dedicated CMC board member, have been tremendous patrons of not only Community Music Center, but also San Francisco Performances, San Francisco Symphony, and many other Bay Area arts and education organizations. Yanek’s brother Sin-Tung Chiu has taught violin at Community Music Center for a quarter of a century, mentoring hundreds of young musicians.
Gala-goers will enter the grand SFJAZZ lobby where they will delight in the sounds of CMC faculty member Dave Scott and his band, accompanied by appetizers and fine wine curated by Charles Phan (of The Slanted Door). If you like the sound of grilled five-spice vermicelli, mango salad, meatball bahn mi, daikon cakes, or vegetarian spring rolls, you will be in luck.
The reception will also feature an exciting silent auction, with available items including tickets to future events at SFJAZZ, SF Symphony, and SF Opera; rare wine lots; and gifts certificates to some of the area’s finest restaurants. Your generous auction purchases will support music scholarships for low-income youth.
At 7:30, the main event will begin inside the Miner Auditorium, a glorious new venue for jazz.
For the musicians to flow, it requires a stage where you can hear very clearly, said Sam Berkow, who designed the acoustics and sound system for SFJAZZ Center as well as Jazz at Lincoln Center. For the audience watching the band, with seating around the stage you’ll get that collective sense of the listening experience, which is important when musicians are not just playing a chart but offering a solo in response to the crowd’s energy.
Once inside the sparkling new auditorium, friends of CMC will be treated to performances by the CMC Children’s Chorus, the Mission District Young Musicians Program (MDYMP) Ensemble, and the headliner, the Mark Inouye Quartet. A recent review described how Inouye endowed the solo part with heartbreaking lyricism, and Chicago Sun-Times wrote glowlingly of a dreamy voyage launched by a three-minute trumpet solo from eloquent principal Mark Inouye.
A Salute to the Joy of Making Music will be a one of a kind event that you won’t want to miss. And the best thing of all is that the proceeds will benefit an organization that has been transforming the heart of our community since 1921, making San Francisco more musical, more compassionate, and more accessible. We hope to see you there.
For more information or to RSVP, please contact Ashley Coyle at (415) 647-6015 x78 or rsvp@sfcmc.org.
For information on performances at CMC’s Mission District Branch and beyond, please check our Event Calendar.
