Music Picks of the Week: From Jew Harps to a Pas de Deux

Here are some very varied music picks for the week.

Get ready to Rumble!

Wednesday, July 7^th: The Rumble SF. Future Sounds presents the Rumble SF, a FREE concert at Du Nord featuring AB & the Sea, So Many Wizards, and What Laura Says. The event is sponsored by Noise Pop, the Bay Bridged, the Owl Mag, Amoeba, and a bunch of other Bay Area music orgs, so I’m taking their word that it’ll be rad. It’s FREE with RSVP here.
Wednesday, July 7^th, 8:30pm
Café Du Nord
2170 Market St.
FREE

Litz Plummer

Friday, July 9^th: Friday Night Soirée @ the de Young. This week’s Cultural Encounters: Friday Night Soireé features an evening of FREE entertainment in support of the de Young current Birth of Impressionism exhibit (which is great, by the way!). Enjoy performances by San Francisco opera singer Litz Plummer and a pas de deux by Velocity Circus (can-can acrobats!). Don’t miss out on the paint-your-own-Seurat lesson to find out that those “impressions” are a lot harder to make than it looks.
Friday, July 9^th
The de Young Museum
50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive [Golden Gate Park]
FREE

The Jew Harp

Sunday, July 11^th: Jewish Music Festival. Celebrate the 25 years of Jewish music at Yerba Buena on Sunday. Expect a lot of klezmer, an “Instrument Petting Zoo” (?), and hopefully some Jew harps. Now here’s my question: is this tiny mouth instrument called a “Jew harp” because we were wandering the desert for so long that it would have been hard to lug a real harp around, or because Jews are just too cheap to buy a real harp? Chew on that while you’re chewing on your harp.
Sunday, July 11^th, 12pm
Yerba Buena Gardens
3^rd and Mission
FREE

Sunday, July 11^th: Bastille Day Concert. Pop over to Golden Gate Park after Yerba Buena and go straight from music for Jews to music for people who hate Jews. Just kidding (kind of).  The Golden Gate Park Band will perform “a very French concert” in honor of Bastille Day. If you want to pick up someone with a French accent (which I recommend), this is the place to do it.
Sunday, July 11, 1pm
Music Concourse in Golden Gate Park
55 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive
FREE

*Thursday, July 8^th: Shameless Self-Promotion. If you find some extra dollars in the couch cushions, I’m playing a show on Thursday at the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden’s Redwood Grove. I know they charge a lot but it is in one of the most beautiful venues in the Bay (an outdoor amphitheater in a redwood forest!) and they only have a few concerts there each year (if you think of it as $5 per performer it’s not as bad). Use the money you’re saving by going to all these other FREE shows to come see me, Ed Masuga (he’s amazing live) and That Blasted Hound.
Thursday, July 8^th, 5:30pm
The Redwood Grove [UC Berkeley Botanical Garden]
200 Centennial Drive
$15