{"id":243153,"date":"2010-01-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-27T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/sushi-rolls-on-with-challenging-art-song-series\/"},"modified":"2010-01-27T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-27T08:00:00","slug":"sushi-rolls-on-with-challenging-art-song-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/sushi-rolls-on-with-challenging-art-song-series\/","title":{"rendered":"Sushi Rolls on with \u2018Challenging\u2019 Art Song Series"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sushi rolls on with \u2018challenging\u2019 art song series<\/p>\n

Por Charlene Baldridge<\/p>\n

Columnista SDUN<\/p>\n

\"Sushi<\/a>
Fresh Sound Series* March 16 @ 8pm Scott Amendola \u2013 percussion Wil Blades \u2013 Hammond B3 organ \u2013 From San Francisco<\/figcaption><\/figure>Long before developers coined phrases to describe areas east of downtown, there was Sushi, an avant-garde gathering place for performance and visual art that eventually moved to the old Carnation Milk building at the corner of 11th and J streets, then a wilderness presided over by the building\u2019s eye mural that looked to the north and was one\u2019s beacon to finding the place. Through two renovations and redevelopments and a number of managements, Sushi survived, both yon and thither, sometimes as the gypsy \u201cTake-Out.\u201d Miraculously, it reopened at 11th and J last year as Sushi: A Center for the Urban Arts.<\/p>\n

The eye is gone and the neighborhood, cheek by jowl with the Padres ballpark, is dominated by high-rise condos. The Corner, a favorite burger joint, exists a block away and there is plenty of street and garage parking nearby. All good. With the reopening came a new series, \u201cFresh Sound,\u201d curated by Bonnie Wright, who has connections in San Diego, New York and the world \u2013 especially the world of new music, hence the \u201cfresh\u201d in \u201cFresh Sound.\u201d Wright was proprietor of the late, great Spruce St. Forum.<\/p>\n

Wright\u2019s programming is fresh as in different and in your face just like Sushi\u2019s regular programming (www.sushiart.org). The Fresh Sound heard Tues., Jan. 4, was the \u201cend of the arc\u201d that Wright dubbed the inaugural \u201cIlluminating\u201d series. The artists were sound artist Margaret Noble, who teaches at High Tech High, and vocalist Susan Narucki, a professor at University of California, San Diego. The occasion marked the first time this writer has heard Narucki perform \u201cnew\u201d music, in this case a piece from John Cage\u2019s Songbook, and two pieces of her own devising, the first with text by poet Peter Hutchinson and the second her own text and setting.<\/p>\n

Narucki\u2019s paraphrase of Cage\u2019s remarks about musical structure was of great help in understanding one\u2019s feelings after the experience of Noble\u2019s work based on the milieu of George Orwell\u2019s \u201c1984,\u201d in which Orwell outlined the rise of the totalitarian state. Armed with an array of extant and presumably made instruments and exotic electronics that ruminated and reprocessed, Noble presented the sounds of the 1940s era, broadcast and bent. The aural experience ranged from sounds digestive to percussive, using distortions of the artist reading live from the text and playing string notes that were then electronically processed. The annoying and fascinating piece disdains purity and organization. It is a severe challenge to the mind and a sensibility that craves organization, and perhaps that is its reason for being. At any rate, Noble is an attractive teacher and performer, whose students must think her really cool. Most certainly, some in the youthful, sold-out audience came to hear her.<\/p>\n

Narucki\u2019s work was challenging as well, in that it took the purity of poetry and imagination and layered them with sound enhancements. A noted interpreter of new works and a singer of extraordinary range and beauty of tone, Narucki proved adept at the spoken word, which she made sing almost as song. The meaning and nuance of Hutchinson\u2019s work, \u201cTime,\u201d and her own narrative poem, \u201cThe Degrees of Truthfulness,\u201d may not need such freight. This lover of art song again longed for purity. Nonetheless, the latter work, particularly as it applies to loss and grief, was consoling, peaceful, and restorative.<\/p>\n

On Jan. 25 Wright presents a special engagement of the Maryland group Ear, Nose and Throat, which is known as \u201cthe Bermuda Triangle of sound.\u201d The Fresh Sound percussion series begins Tues., Feb. 6. Sushi: A Center for the Urban Arts is at 390 11th Ave. in East Village. For more information, go to www.sushiart.org or call (619) 235-8466.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sushi rolls on with \u2018challenging\u2019 art song series By Charlene Baldridge SDUN Columnist Long before developers coined phrases to describe areas east of downtown, there was Sushi, an avant-garde gathering place for performance and visual art that eventually moved to the old Carnation Milk building at the corner of 11th and J streets, then a […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":243154,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Sushi Rolls on with \u2018Challenging\u2019 Art Song Series","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11551,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-news","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}