SFR Picks—Week of May 9

Trial by Fire

With summer just around the corner, there lies one obstacle for students everywhere: finals. Stacks of scattered notes around the bedroom and binders full of equations await many, but those enrolled in the Santa Fe Community College's Intro to Live and Reason course have something else in store.

For the past 14 weeks, six students have been learning the ways of Ableton Live and Reason (two popular software programs used for music production), and this week they'll finally strut their stuff. "I've always been intrigued with how to make music and music production in general, stemming from growing up on hip-hop; now I'm finally getting around to getting all the technical training," student Ben Hoffacker tells SFR.

While one semester might seem like a lot of time to learn how to use only two programs, there's a very steep learning curve. And instead of a traditional final to test his students on all the ins and outs of their newly acquired beatmaking skills, professor Jason Goodyear has opted to go the live performance route, a method he's used for years. "The idea is not just, 'Here's how you do it, blah blah blah,'" Goodyear says. "Let's go through and learn this for the purpose of using it—stepping up in front of people and actually doing something."

For the performance, the class splits into two groups, but each performer still gets time to shine. Jennifer Castro, a local DJ who goes by the name BadCat elaborates: "We're not performing one comprehensive piece together, we're each doing our own thing. I'm going to prepare different clips of the instruments that would be used in making up my techno track, then I'll perform that song live, and there's some other people that are going to be playing instruments along with their tracks." The for-credit class is filled with people from varying experience levels and backgrounds, so each performance should have its own unique sound and style.

"It's a great opportunity to hear a wide variety of musicianship from Santa Fe that you would normally not get to hear," Castro adds. If that's not your cup of tea, Goodyear jokes, "Come see music by people with nothing to lose."

(Pema Baldwin)

Input|Output:
7 pm Friday May 11. Free.
O'Shaugnessy Performance Space,
1600 St. Michael's Drive,
473-6011

Hell is Other People

Oh, you wacky existentialists—always cutting to the quick and basically making everyone look inward and think, "I'm a horrible person." You're valuable, so when you get to writing plays, such as Sartre's No Exit, we people get to checking them out. In the play, three dead souls enter hell and come to realize that an eternity of damnation might not be what they'd assumed. Horrible transgressions are confessed, the idea of morality is examined and humans plumb the very depths of their psyches. Students from St. John's College's Chrysostomos Players tackle Sartre's work and everyone else realizes they're going to die one day. Gah.(ADV)

No Exit: 
7:30 pm Wednesday May 9. Free.
St. John's College (Peterson Student Center),
1160 Camino Cruz Blanca,
984-6000.

Olé!

We'll never forget our first time walking down the stairs to The Matador—we only had a baggie full of quarters (true story), but consummate barman Caesar accepted them and poured our drink strong. Punk rock blared from the speakers, young people milled about chatting and the no-frills atmosphere seemed to scream, "You've found your place!" Fast-forward 11 years, and everyone's favorite subterranean bar is still serving them up strong and with a smile. Let's celebrate, shall we? With DJs and special edition T-shirts and those three-finger pours you've come to expect from 'em. Cheers to you, The Matador, and here's to 11 more.(ADV)

The Matador's 11th Birthday: 
9 pm Thursday May 10. Free.
The Matador,
116 W San Francisco St.,
984-5050

Times Three

SFR has had great things to say about literally every performer taking the stage at Second Street Brewery's Rufina Taproom this Sunday night—from singer-songwriter Liv Lombardi's self-reflective tunes and ppoacher ppoacher's weird-out harp jams to Ten Ten Division front woman Vonnie Kyle's love of rocking guitars and introspective lyrical style. These are strong and fearless musicians who run the gamut from folky songwriting and intense world music influences to straight-up rock-and-effing-roll, all of which sounds pretty damn good to us.(ADV)

Liv Lombardi, Ten Ten Division and ppoacher ppoacher: 
8 pm Sunday May 13. $8.
Second Street Brewery (Rufina),
2920 Rufina St.,
954-1068.