Featured Events in Palo Alto in October, 2024(December Updated)

Gardens Around Us: A Progressive Walking TourSaturday, October 05, 2024 | 01:00 PM to 04:00 PM FREEMeet at the Art Center for a special community walk to highlight unique community garden sites in Palo Alto. Information Source: Palo Alto Art Center | eventbrite

Join Bike Palo Alto for a pedal-powered adventure through the beautiful streets and trails of our vibrant city Bike Palo Alto Get ready to pedal your way through Palo Alto and beyond on two wheels. Whether you're a beginner or a more experienced cyclist, this in-person event will provide you with maps that help you discover convenient bike routes around Palo Alto, with hundreds of other families biking exploring the same routes at the same time. Starting from Fairmeadow Elementary School, the on-campus Bike Palo Alto Safety Fair will offer everything you need to be ride-ready. More information coming soon . Information Source: Bike Palo Alto | eventbrite

Join local author Lynn Stegner at Books Inc. Palo Alto for a celebration of her novel The Half-Life of Guilt! Lynn Stegner’s acclaimed novels and story collections have drawn comparisons to the works of Margaret Atwood, Barbara Kingsolver, Alice Munro, and John Updike. Now in her new novel, The Half-Life of Guilt, Stegner tells the story of Clair Bugato and Mason Comstock. Together they journey to the world’s largest saltworks in Baja California, where a proposed expansion threatens the California gray whale population, recently come back from the brink of extinction. In the midst of a conservation battle, they meet a mysterious son of Mexico, Rubio Cantú, who leads them to the powers that be. Their two-week journey sends Clair deep into the past, where she reviews the divergent paths she and her near-identical twin sister have taken away from a childhood tragedy. At the same time, Mason confronts his own unhappy past in Cornwall, England, with a father whose hate was stronger than his love. No other work of fiction patterns the warp and weft of human guilt, the homesickness only love can cure, environmental crises, the intrinsic conflict between international commerce and planetary health, and the necessity of forgiveness. The Half-Life of Guilt is woven from these themes, delivering to the reader an engrossing and transformative literary experience. “The Half Life of Guilt adroitly braids paired narratives: a risk-filled present journey down the coast of Mexico and the fraught past of a family in northern California. The twins at the center of the story—Nina and Clair—compel our close attention, and the novel somehow manages to be both action-packed and contemplative. Lynn Stegner gives us scientists and vintners and idealists and cynics: troubled creatures all. And she does so in prose as vivid as her scenery; the dead remain wholly alive.”—Nicholas Delbanco, author of Why Writing Matters “As Stegner explores both personal responsibility and our responsibility to care for the natural world, she illuminates the ways we love, fail to love, and repair our failures. Her unique sensibility makes for a fascinating read.”—Andrea Barrett, author of Natural History and Ship Fever “In this beautiful and layered novel Lynn Stegner takes us on a passionate tour of self-discovery and family history written so closely and with such astonishing sincerity that the entire novel becomes a kind of surprising tenderness. Stegner has the writer’s gift of creating a dear victory from the uneasiness of pristine places. This is a rich, rich book.”—Ron Carlson, author of Return to Oakpine “The Half-Life of Guilt is a powerful tale of family loyalty, romantic love, and the long reach of a single, shocking childhood tragedy. Lynn Stegner has a profound understanding of how sisters relate—or fail to relate—and how the truth of the past can be lost to our misperceptions. This sobering and insightful story is beautifully told.”—Elizabeth Crook, author of The Madstone and The Which Way Tree “Lynn Stegner is a beautiful writer. This fiercely wrought family saga will take your breath away with its sharpness and depth.”—Rick Bass, author of For a Little While: New and Selected Stories Lynn Stegner’s books include the novels Undertow, Fata Morgana, and Because a Fire Was in My Head, which won the Faulkner Award for Best Novel and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her novella triptych, Pipers at the Gates of Dawn, was awarded a Faulkner Society’s Gold Medal. She divides her time between San Francisco and northern Vermont. Information Source: Books Inc. | eventbrite

Join local illustrator and comic artist Hannah Hillman at Books Inc. Palo Alto for a celebration of her first collection which poses the question: What if our cats were responsible for taking care of us for a change? Following an unwitting human who finds herself in a world where humans' and cats' roles have reversed, Cat People examines the special and inscrutable relationship we have with our feline companions, revealing the delightful absurdities of both species along the way. Only the keen eyes of cats could so sharply examine the most bizarre human behaviors we don't think twice about, including grooming, eating, sleeping, working, and competing with other humans for attention and territory. By flipping the script and casting humans in the role of pet, Hannah Hillam spins an unforgettable tail of the unique love and often baffling coexistence between cats and people. “Simultaneously hilarious, thoughtful, and bizarre! Cat People is Hannah Hillam at her weirdest and best. Extremely re-readable and full of magnificent details.” —Nathan W. Pyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Strange Planet “Zany and entirely different, Cat People is an exciting new work that shows off the depth of Hillam’s genius.” —Sarah Andersen, creator of Sarah’s Scribbles and author of Herding Cats “Delightfully weird and funny, and it somehow made me a better cat owner.” —Zach Weinersmith, New York Times bestselling co-author of Soonish and A City on Mars “Wickedly funny, visually inventive, and somehow both adorable and twisted in equal measure—I was crying laughing. A hilarious, heartfelt and subversive exploration of the pet/owner relationship!” —Tommy Siegel, author of Candy Hearts “While I was expecting, and got, the darkly absurd, observational humor Hannah’s mastered for the internet, I was surprised to find it accompanying a touching story of feline anthropomorphism that left me wanting to be kinder to the animals in my life, and myself.” —Henry James Garrett, author of This Book Will Make You Kinder “Cat People is equal parts hilarious, adorable, and unhinged—okay, maybe a touch more unhinged. Hannah’s signature art style and visceral humor are coupled with the best subject matter: cats! This is a must-buy for all cat lovers out there, especially if your beloved animal was rescued from the outside . . . or through a vomitous portal.” —Andrew Marttila, The Cat Photographer “Every cat lover will understand this book to their core. Hilarious and sweet all the way through.” —Tillie Walden, author of On a Sunbeam “Such a fun read . . . with vivid imagination and remarkable attention to detail. One of the many reasons I love Hillam’s work is how far she’s willing to go to explore her ideas, even if it gets hilariously weird (and it usually does!).” —Cassandra Calin, author of I Left the House Today! Hannah Hillam is an illustrator and comic artist living in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, two kids, and two cats. Information Source: Books Inc. | eventbrite

Jason Reynolds has done it again!… Fresh from start to finish… This is what it could be, should be, if only we were all as lucky as Aria. Girls (and everyone) wait for your Neon!—Judy Blume, author of Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. and Forever...Jason Reynolds is a New York Times bestselling author and one of the most prominent voices in contemporary young people’s literature. We are honored to host him for Twenty-Four Seconds from Now…: A Love Story, an unfiltered and undeniably sweet stream-of-consciousness story about a teen boy on the cusp of experiencing a huge first. Twenty-four months ago: Neon gets chased by a dog all around the parking lot of a church. Not his finest moment. And definitely one he would have loved to forget if it weren’t for the dog’s owner, Aria. Dressed in sweats, a t-shirt, hair in a ponytail. Aria. Way more than fine. Twenty-four weeks ago: Neon’s dad insists on talking to him about tenderness and intimacy. Neon and Aria are definitely in love, and while they haven’t taken that next big step…yet, they’ve started talking about…that. Twenty-four days ago: Neon’s mom finds her—gulp—bra in his room. Hey! No judging! Those hook thingies are complicated! So he’d figured he’d better practice, what with the big day only a month away. Twenty-four minutes ago: Neon leaves his shift at work at his dad’s bingo hall, making sure to bring some chicken tenders for Aria. They’re not candlelight and they definitely aren’t caviar, but they are her favorite. And right this second? Neon is locked in Aria’s bathroom, completely freaking out because twenty-four seconds from now he and Aria are about to…about to… Well, they won’t do anything if he can’t get out of his own head (all the advice, insecurities, and what-ifs) and out of this bathroom! Intrigued? Join us at the Haymarket Theater to hear from this master of compelling stories. About the author Jason Reynolds is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, a Newbery Award Honoree, a Printz Award Honoree, a two-time National Book Award finalist, a Kirkus Award winner, a UK Carnegie Medal winner, a two-time Walter Dean Myers Award winner, an NAACP Image Award Winner, an Odyssey Award Winner and two-time honoree, and the recipient of multiple Coretta Scott King honors and the Margaret A. Edwards Award. He was also the 2020–2022 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. His many books include Stamped; the Track series (Ghost, Patina, Sunny, and Lu); and Long Way Down, which received a Newbery Honor, a Printz Honor, and a Coretta Scott King Honor. He lives in Washington, DC. You can find his ramblings at JasonWritesBooks.com. Photo of Jason Reynolds by Adedayo Dayo Kosoko _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ COVID SAFETY PROTOCOLS: We strongly encourage attendees to wear masks at our events, although they will NOT be required. We will have masks available for attendees who want them. Do NOT attend the event if you, or any member of your family, have any respiratory symptoms (e.g. cough, runny nose, and/or sore throat), or have had a significant exposure to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19. We can refund your ticket(s) in this case. Information Source: Kepler's Literary Foundation - Youth | eventbrite

From New York Times bestselling author and adored comedian Randy Rainbow comes a new essay collection, Low-Hanging Fruit: Sparkling Whines, Champagne Problems, and Pressing Issues from My Gay Agenda. Randy Rainbow has a few things on his mind that he wants to talk about. As a savvy social commentator who is keenly attuned to the public discourse, Randy’s unfailing intuition tells him that the perspective everyone in America is clamoring for is that of a privileged white male complaining about a bunch of shit. While writing his bestselling memoir, Playing With Myself, Randy saw an America in crisis. He knew that what the country needed to get back on its high heels was a hard-hitting gay agenda, and here it is—Low-Hanging Fruit—a book filled with sparkling whines, a few flutes of Champagne problems, and a Birkin bag of the most pressing issues facing the US, from dancing TikTok grandmas, to Elon Musk, the GOP, and Donald Jessica Trump. Randy dishes up some sex talk about life on the dating apps, Craigslist hookups and more. (“Gurl, wait till you hear the story about the fireman and the goggles…”) Randy’s longtime companion, the glamorous Chinchilla Silver Persian cat Tippi, makes an appearance as she dishes about her life Chez Randy. And, in the most highly anticipated sequel since Top Gun: Maverick, Randy continues the conversation with his mother, Gwen, because who knows better than the Jewish mother of a gay man about how to solve America’s problems? Low-Hanging Fruit is a bold manifesto for a nation desperately in need of a makeover. Rainbow will be joined on stage by journalist in residence Angie Coiro. COVID SAFETY PROTOCOLS: We strongly encourage attendees to wear masks at our events, although they will NOT be required. We will have masks available for attendees who want them. Do NOT attend the event if you, or any member of your family, have any respiratory symptoms (e.g. cough, runny nose, and/or sore throat), or have had a significant exposure to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19. We can refund your ticket(s) in this case. Information Source: Kepler's Literary Foundation | eventbrite

From New York Times bestselling author and adored comedian Randy Rainbow comes a new essay collection, Low-Hanging Fruit: Sparkling Whines, Champagne Problems, and Pressing Issues from My Gay Agenda. Randy Rainbow has a few things on his mind that he wants to talk about. As a savvy social commentator who is keenly attuned to the public discourse, Randy’s unfailing intuition tells him that the perspective everyone in America is clamoring for is that of a privileged white male complaining about a bunch of shit. While writing his bestselling memoir, Playing With Myself, Randy saw an America in crisis. He knew that what the country needed to get back on its high heels was a hard-hitting gay agenda, and here it is—Low-Hanging Fruit—a book filled with sparkling whines, a few flutes of Champagne problems, and a Birkin bag of the most pressing issues facing the US, from dancing TikTok grandmas, to Elon Musk, the GOP, and Donald Jessica Trump. Randy dishes up some sex talk about life on the dating apps, Craigslist hookups and more. (“Gurl, wait till you hear the story about the fireman and the goggles…”) Randy’s longtime companion, the glamorous Chinchilla Silver Persian cat Tippi, makes an appearance as she dishes about her life Chez Randy. And, in the most highly anticipated sequel since Top Gun: Maverick, Randy continues the conversation with his mother, Gwen, because who knows better than the Jewish mother of a gay man about how to solve America’s problems? Low-Hanging Fruit is a bold manifesto for a nation desperately in need of a makeover. COVID SAFETY PROTOCOLS: We strongly encourage attendees to wear masks at our events, although they will NOT be required. We will have masks available for attendees who want them. Do NOT attend the event if you, or any member of your family, have any respiratory symptoms (e.g. cough, runny nose, and/or sore throat), or have had a significant exposure to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19. We can refund your ticket(s) in this case. Information Source: Kepler's Literary Foundation | eventbrite

Join Sophia Falco and Farnaz Fatemi at Books Inc. Palo Alto for a reading and discussion of their books If My Hands Were Birds and Sister Tongue! They will be joined in conversation with Allison Herman. Praise for My Hands Were Birds: “Sophia Falco is a born learner and seeker, as her very name suggests, questing after the wisdom of a psychic-spiritual order that will transform herself lastingly. The title of her award-winning new book, If My Hands Were Birds: A Poem, suggests this utter yearning for flight, for release into becoming little birds lost, doves or falcons in flight across heaven and earth. This long quasi-narrative poem holds these felt tensions of embodiment as well as a Buddhist-like release from the prison-house (or bird cage) of flesh-meat into some airy creature of metamorphosis via sustained expression and a tender openness to change and future love. Poetry grounds and sustains these tensions, storms, and inner flux of mind and affect into achieved diary-like form, an ethos of creative activism and compassion, all elegantly and brilliantly collated daily as original poetry as in a state of renewed innocence, healing, and rebirth: for “my life was on the line” once again in these life-saving lines of poetry or like “a basketball in flight” as one last perfect shot.” —Rob Wilson is a poet-scholar who teaches in the Literature Department at UC Santa Cruz & author ofWhen the Nikita Moon Roseas well asBe Always Converting, Be Always Converted: An American Poetics. Sophia Falco wields her poetry as lamp and lance against the darkness that surrounds us all — claiming her place proudly within the ranks of poets past whose private lifelong struggles with mental illness, sexuality, and silence she both echoes and embodies (from Emily Dickinson to Allen Ginsberg to Mary Oliver). In doing so she achieves brief flights and flashes of an almost zen-like insight: graceful as the arc of a basketball at the buzzer; gentle as the rustle of hands over paper. Reaching “outwards instead of inwards” for “a way out of this / mind maze.” And finding it here within these pages.” —Dr. Scott Lankford, Professor of English (emeritus), Foothill College Stanford GEN Global Educators Network “Sophia Falco’s If My Hands Were Birds is a poem that shines a light on things often left in the dark. With her willingness to lay bare her struggles with mental health, sexuality, identity, and the intergenerational transmission of trauma, Falco reaches “below the surface” of “fear, and more fear, and more fear” into a place of compassion to discover that “maybe hope lies on that tiny songbird’s wings.” This epic poem asks the reader to consider not only what poetry is, but what it can be—a “lifeboat on land.”” —Kaecey McCormick, author of Pixelated Tears and Sleeping With Demons “Sophia Falco reminds us in her powerfully resonant, deeply affecting work that the game is meant not for the NBA, NCAA, or AAU but for the championship of our souls.” —David Hollander, New York University Professor, and AuthorHow Basketball Can Save the World “Falco's epic poem is at once emotional and expressive but wholly accessible to the reader. Drawing on personal experiences and relationships, Falco's autoethnographic observations about themes such as life, love, sexuality, and mental health - to name but a few - provide deep insight into her personal journey through self-development and -awareness.” —Marlen Elliot Harrison, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief,The AutoEthnographer Sophia Falco'sfourth, award-winning book of poetry, is titled: If My Hands Were Birds: A Poem is forthcoming soon in August 2024 to be published by UnCollected Press. Her third poetry book titled: Chronicles of Cosmic Chaos: In The Fourth Dimension (December, 2022) has been entered into the Northern California Book Awards; results pending. In addition, she is the author of: Farewell Clay Dove (2021), and of her award-winning chapbook The Immortal Sunflower (2019). She is the winner of the Mirabai Prize for Poetry, she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and she has over 50 individual poems published in various literary journals and magazines. Sister Tongue: The poems in Sister Tongue explore negative spaces—the distance between twin sisters, between lovers, between Farsi and English, between the poet’s upbringing in California and her family in Iran. This space between vibrates with loss and longing, arcing with tension. Fatemi’s poetry delves into the intricacies of the relational space between people, the depth of ancestral roots, and the visceral memories that shimmer beyond the reach of words. Language is one of the origins of the poet’s displacement and the evidence of her non-belonging—in both Farsi- and English-speaking communities. The long lyric essay which makes up the spine of this book plumbs years of wordlessness and a journey of reconciliation, as Fatemi asks how her tongue might be a passport to the otherwise inaccessible territories within a self. The poems in Sister Tongue metabolize longing while holding space for the poet’s multiple inheritances, offering a vision of a porosity of self. Through the work of this reckoning, Fatemi reveals how connections between people and places might be forged. Praise for “Sister Tongue”“Delicious, provocative, and incredibly wise, Farnaz Fatemi transcends years and oceans in these pages. Like gripping a cup and string to the ear, Sister Tongue is a hopeful missive, proof of words and their witnesses, an atlas of the wonder of becoming.”—T Kira Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls “Poet Farnaz Fatemi is the soulful Iranian American truth-teller and wonder-wanderer we’ve needed to hear. In Farsi, in English, in Tehran, or California, these poems cherish the miracle of connectedness by weaving family threads through time and space—through sisters, mothers, grandmothers, through a changed and changing world. Sister Tongue is a luscious love letter to language(s), spoken in a trusting, intimate voice. The poet recognizes the twinned solace of silence and song, of sister and self. Loss takes its seat, as it does, at the table, and Fatemi, with tea, family history, powerful memory, and a new/old tongue, inscribes it alongside the depths of beauty and joy in this radiant book of passionate understanding.”—Brenda Shaughnessy, author of The Octopus Museum “I praise the present tense of these poems for its tensile strength, its ability to hold the struggle that is happening in the past, present, and future. The way it speaks of the perpetual, of what it is to be tongue-tied in the presence of one’s other self. ‘Language is geological,’ this speaker tells us, ‘a process of accumulation, and accretion accompanied by landslides.’ In setting out to speak the language of her blood, she finds herself at once estranged and embraced. Thrilled and defeated. What to do with such a natural disaster? These poems persist in their attempts to bridge worlds, offering hope of a complex and hard-won reconciliation, one richly crafted line at a time. In the words of Fatemi, ‘I want the foreigner in me / to meet the foreigner in me.’”—Danusha Laméris, author of Bonfire Opera“ Sister Tongue, Farnaz Fatemi’s debut poetry collection, transports us to a place where language must stretch to fit the largeness of human love and longing, and in doing so, fills the absences we did not even know we harbored. Sister Tongue begins to say what many of us already know—that borders and countries are too limiting to define us. Her poems offer us both a reckoning and a salve.”—Persis M. Karim, chair of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University “Neither exile nor immigrant, Farnaz Fatemi writes with a double intelligence that transcends any presuppositions we might bring to a poetry of the other. She claims her strategic advantage with confidence and laser-like insight, the gift of deep listening and the power of naming, as she slips back and forth freely across borders like a master spy reporting from an uncharted world suspended between two cultures. I am optimistic that Sister Tongue speaks the language of our future.”—Zara Houshmand, writer “Thick with striking sensory detail and lingering images, Sister Tongue traces the narrator’s return to Tehran after 25 years abroad. It is lush and lamenting, returning again and again to the tongue, the mouth, the breath, considering both the power and constraints of language and the work of silence in family connections and the continuous shift of one’s sense of self. A truly gorgeous piece of writing.”—International Literary Awards, Penelope Niven Prize in Creative Non-Fiction 2018; JudgeSeema Reza I am a sucker for any story that is a search for language--there's something beautiful about trying to find the words to say something while using a tongue that is familiar to us--to somehow write ourselves into a form of translating what we cannot understand. This piece, about overcoming being a stranger in a place where one should feel at home, is a beautiful examination of all of the words that we mispronounce.”—Kurt Brown Prize, 2017; Judge Brian Oliu Farnaz Fatemi is currently serving as Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California. Her book, Sister Tongue زبان خواهر,, was chosen by Tracy K. Smith as winner of the 2021 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize. Sister Tongue was published by Kent State University Press on August 31, 2022. You can read her Poet Laureate blog, For Better or Verse, here. Information Source: Books Inc. | eventbrite

Author and friend of Books Inc. Mike Chen will be visiting our Palo Alto shop for a celebration of his contribution to the Marvel What If...? series, with his newest bookMarc Spector was Host to Venom? Mike will be joined in conversation with fellow local author Tara Sim! Marc Spector and Venom engage in a battle of wills in the next adventure of an epic multiversal series reimagining iconic Marvel origin stories. So many worlds, so little time. Infinite possibilities, creating infinite realities. Long have I watched Marc Spector cheat death in the name of the Egyptian god Khonshu. But…what if Moon Knight was subsumed by a Venom from another universe? Marc Spector is used to voices in his head. He’s used to waking up disoriented, unsure what his alters, Jake and Steven, might have been up to. He’s used to having an Egyptian god command him as Moon Knight, his avatar of justice and revenge. What he’s not used to: staring into the face of a literal, out-of-body doppelganger. Another Marc, crash-landed from an alternate reality, begging for help? Yeah, that is a new one, even for him. But before he can really process anything beyond Khonshu’s incessant alarm bells, it becomes clear this other Marc didn’t travel solo. Some kind of alien — a symbiote named Venom— casts off its current host and begins to merge with Marc, forcing Khonshu away from his chosen champion and claiming Moon Knight for its own. The formerly stark white suit that struck fear into the hearts of criminals now looms as a jet-black shadow over friends and foes alike. Marc’s lethal prowess fueled by Venom’s penchant for violence carves a trail of chaos as they comb through the vigilante’s torturous past. Yet a sliver of hope remains: Finally free of Venom’s control, the other Jake and Steven re-gain consciousness to find themselves in a strange reality, without their Marc, but with a strange bird-like god insisting that “they will do.” Desperate, lost, and running out of time, the pair make a deal: become Khonshu’s new avatar to track Venom’s path of destruction, save this universe, and just maybe figure out a way back to their own. Mike Chen is the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Brotherhood, Here and Now and Then, A Quantum Love Story, and other novels, as well as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine comics. He has covered geek culture for sites such as Nerdist and The Mary Sue, and in a different life, he's covered the NHL. A member of SFWA, Mike lives in the Bay Area with his wife, daughter, and many rescue animals. Follow him on Twitter, Bluesky, and Instagram: @mikechenwriter Tara Simis the author of The Dark Gods trilogy, the Scavenge the Stars duology, and the Timekeeper trilogy. She can typically be found wandering the wilds of the Bay Area, California. When she’s not chasing cats or lurking in bookstores, she writes books about magic, murder, and mayhem. Information Source: Books Inc. | eventbrite

Violinist Jennifer Choi, cellist Angela Lee, and guitarist Marc Teicholz join forces to play a delightfully varied and colorful program. The music ranges from Paganini to Piazzolla, Baroque to Balkan, light and humorous to darkly sensual and intense. These seasoned performers bring their vast experience, love of their craft, as well as the pleasure they take in each other's company to make music that is fresh and personal. Angela Lee - cello Cellist Angela Lee is a graduate of The Juilliard School and Yale School of Music. She is a recipient of a Fulbright scholarship to study in London with William Pleeth; a grant from the Foundation for American Musicians in Europe; the Jury Prize in the Naumburg International Cello Competition; and a cello performance fellowship from the American-Scandinavian Foundation. She is a founding member of The Lee Trio, which won top prizes in the Kuhmo International Chamber Music Competition in Finland and the Gaetano Zinetti International Chamber Music Competition in Italy. The Trio has commissioned and premiered works of numerous living composers and has recordings on Delos, Innova and the Chelsea Music Festival Records labels. In its third decade, the Trio regularly gives master classes worldwide and performs in major venues across North America, Asia and Europe including the South Bank Centre and Wigmore Hall in the UK, Carnegie Hall, Berlin Philharmonie, Leipzig Gewandhaus, The National Philharmonic in Kyiv and the Shanghai Oriental Art Center. Using music to foster peace and goodwill, Ms. Lee has made humanitarian trips to the Republic of the Philippines and the former Yugoslavia. While on a UN-sanctioned tour of six war-torn cities throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina, she performed for NATO troops and displaced civilians. As a member of Ensemble SF since 2022, she continues to delve into a vast array of chamber music, allowing this multi-faceted art form to inspire and connect with others in unconventional settings. Ms. Lee has been coaching chamber music at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music since 2017 and serves on the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra Alumni Association Leadership Council and on the Board of Directors of The Resonance Project, which promotes empathy through live music. Jennifer Choi, violin Award winning violinist, Jennifer Choi has charted a career that breaks through the conventional boundaries of solo, chamber music, and the art of improvisation. Hailed by The New York Times as an “excellent violinist, soulful, compelling,” she has performed worldwide in venues such as the Library of Congress in Washington D. C., the RAI National Radio in Rome, Hong Kong National Radio, and the Mozartsalle in Vienna since giving her debut recital at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall in 2000. As a soloist, she has performed with the Oregon Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, the SONYC (String Orchestra of New York City), among others. A prominent chamber musician, Jennifer has performed for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, The Metropolitan and Guggenheim Museums, Santa Cruz's Music In May, and numerous other chamber music series across North America, Europe, and Asia. She performs on a 1718 “Firebird” Stradivarius generously bestowed upon her by Finrebel. www.jenniferchoi.com Marc Teicholz - guitar Guitarist Marc Teicholz was awarded first prize at the 1989 International Guitar Foundation of America Competition, the largest, most prestigious contest of its kind in the United States. He was also a prize winner at the 1991 New York East-West Artists Competition. Described by Gramophone as “arguably the best of the new young guitarists to have emerged,” and by Soundboard magazine as “among the best we have ever heard”. Teicholz’s performances throughout the world include tours of the United States, Canada, Russia, Poland, Switzerland, Southeast Asia, New Zealand and Fiji. His recitals and master classes have received critical acclaim, and he has been featured in concert with orchestras in Spain, Portugal, California and Hawaii. He has also had new works written specially for him. Most recently, Teicholz debuted Clarice Assad’s Concerto for Guitar, O Saci-Pererê, at the Biasini Festival in San Francisco. Teicholz tours the United States extensively with The Festival of Four. He is featured on the pilot soundtrack for George Lucas’ Young Indiana Jones, and has recorded solo CDs for Naxos, Sugo, Menus and Music, and most recently, Guitar Salon International. His latest solo disc, Valseana, presents works performed on historic guitars of the period of each musical selection. On Delos records, he has recently released “Open your Heart” with soprano Laura Claycomb, featuring mixed 19th and 20th century composers. For Naxos, Marc Teicholz has made his mark with two collections of Sor’s music already committed to disc. In a show of his versatility, he has also recorded the fifth volume of the collected works for guitar by the 19th Century French virtuoso guitarist and composer Napoleon Coste. Teicholz is on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory, teaches in the summer at the California Summer Arts Festival and the Weatherfield Music festival in Vermont. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the Yale School of Music, and holds a J.D. from the University of California Berkeley Boalt School of Law. Information Source: Oshman Family JCC | eventbrite

Премʼєра фільму “Конотопська відьма– відбудеться 30-го жовтня о 19:30 українською мовою з англійськими субтитрами! Прадавня відьма з Конотопу, закохавшись у звичайного хлопця, давно зреклася своїх відьомських сил, але після того, як із початком війни російські солдати захоплюють місто і жорстоко вбивають її коханого, вирішує помститися, повертаєсвої сили і обрушує жахливі та криваві кари на голови та інші частини тіл убивць її нареченого. Фільм українською мовою з англійськими субтитрами. An ancient witch from the Ukrainian town of Konotop (always believed to be a place where witches are born) has renounced her powers after falling in love with a mortal guy, but when the war starts and russian soldiers occupy the city and brutally murder herbeloved, she decides to exact revenge on them, so she restores her powers and subjects her fiancé`s killers to some horrifying and bloody acts of retribution. The film is in Ukrainian with English subtitles. Age restriction: 18+ Information Source: Ukrainian Films USA | eventbrite