Luci

Ocean Beach pop singer, author, coach, and founder of the Sexy Mama Movement Luci Lampe will debut Bare, her first release in seven years, at the Stronghold martial arts school in Point Loma. The mother of four is originally from Lima, Peru, but she grew up in the southern and midwestern U.S., attending college in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her debut EP Live It Up was released in 2010, while living in Nashville, Tennessee, where her husband was deployed in the Air Force. After relocating to L.A., the songs from this EP, along with a music video for the track “Save the World,” landed her a Hollywood Music in Media Award, a Los Angeles Music Award, and three Indie Music Channel Awards. She appeared on season one of The X Factor USA in 2011, following up the next year with her sophomore EP, Grown Up. She eventually moved to San Diego and away from musical pursuits, to spend around a half decade working as an actress and model while coaching women in fitness, life, and business. A Q&A session will be held after the show, and local performing artist Bryant Lamar (who produced Luci’s “Boss Bitches” and “Oyeme”) will also appear.

Berkley Hart

Jeff Berkley and Calman Hart’s ten studio LPs as Berkley Hart have won almost that many San Diego Music Awards, including the 2019 trophy for Best Country Album. Berkley (“I’m one of the rare native San Diegans”) and Hart (“I moved here from Utah in the early ‘80s”) joined forces almost exactly ten years ago, in October 1999. They regularly play any venue around town with a stage and a couple of chairs, and they also launched a series of area house concerts. Though they’ve been known to perform everything from folk, blues, and country to classic Americana covers (such as the O Brother where Art Thou? soundtrack) in concert, both players say the essence of what they do will never change. “What the audiences seem to really love is the two of us playing our guitars and singing our harmonies,” says Hart. “We’ve happened on a magical combination of voices and songwriting that has worked really well for us.” The performance takes place on the Coronado Library lawn, where limited seating is available, so attendees are invited to bring their own lawn chairs.

JazzKatz Orchestra

Photograph by Christopher Hollyday

JazzKatz Orchestra will stage an afternoon performance highlighted by the sultry sounds of vocalist Whitney Shay and alto saxophonist Christopher Hollyday, backed by a 15-piece jazz orchestra featuring originals and arrangements by orchestra director Chaz Cabrera. Whitney Shay grew up near Alpine, later moving to the Japatul Valley near Jamul where she performed in a USO-type show in high school. A 2019 Blues Music Award nominee, and she won Best Blues Album and Artist of the Year trophies at the 2019 San Diego Music Awards, after which she booked a tour of Brazil that just wrapped a few weeks ago. Her many local groups have included Shay & the Hustle, the Whitney Shay Quartet, and Whitney Shay & Robin Henkel, as well as fronting the blues/R&B group Whitney Shay & the Shakedowns. Christopher Hollyday, an Escondido resident since 1996, recorded his debut album Treaty when he was only 14. At the age of 16, he became the youngest person at that time to play the Village Vanguard in New York. The following year, he toured with Maynard Ferguson and has since booked his own ensembles all around the world, as well as recording several albums for RCA/Novus.

Pink Floyd & Led Zeppelin Tribute

Rock and roll takes over the Pavilion once again for the opening of this year’s San Diego International Organ Festival. Rock concerts have become more frequent at the open air Balboa Park amphitheater ever since the worldwide publicity engendered by a 2014 Drive Like Jehu reunion, where the local cult heroes were accompanied by an area organist for their first public performance in nearly two decades. Organist Raúl Prieto Ramírez and the Spreckels Organ Rock Band will interpret the music of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, heavily accenting the melodic keyboard contributions of Rick Wright and John Paul Jones. Ramírez, who replaced longtime Spreckels organist Carol Williams as San Diego Civic Organist and Artistic Director of the Spreckels Organ Society in December 2017, has been staging weekly concerts utilizing the largest pipe organ in the western hemisphere, occasionally with a rock and roll theme. For the Floyd and Zeppelin tribute, the band will include local guitarists Daniel Crawford (Blackout Party, Midnight Rivals) and Ariel Levine (Headphone, Distractions).

Silent

With members based in Baja and San Diego, the goth-inclined Silent features bassist Rodo Ibarra (Maniqui Lazer, Letters From Readers), singer-percussionist Jung Sing (Maniqui Lazer, All Leather), guitarist Alejandro Lara, and drummer Andrea Varela. Their album A Century of Abuse was released by the Locust’s label Three One G, with a separate limited edition of 500 records on white vinyl. “The artwork of the record is a picture that our bass player, Rodo Ibarra, took in Mexicali of a demolished landmark,” Jung Sing told the Reader. “I think the artwork fits perfectly with the title of the record.” One track from the album was rereleased as a hip-hop remix by Luke Henshaw and Justin Pearson of Planet B, with the original instrumentation stripped and Sing’s dark vibrato vocals melded with Henshaw’s robotic assaults and unhinged backup screams courtesy of Pearson, a longtime band associate from the Locust, Dead Cross, and Retox who also heads up the Three One G label. Silent recently released their first song in over a year, a cover of “Prayers for Rain” by the Cure currently available free online. The Casbah bill includes Hexa, and Justin Pearson, who can’t seem to get enough of Silent, will be DJing for part of the evening.