Singer

Equal parts community organizer, Elizabethan fool, and “contemporary sage” (The Guardian), Taylor Mac appears decked and bedazzled in gloriously irreverent regalia in a performance that doesn’t “just defy categorization; [Mac] makes the categories themselves seem irrelevant.” (Time Out NY). This evening of songs features recent works written in collaboration with the composer and Music Director Matt Ray and performed by Mac, Ray, and an incomparable band.

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Taylor Mac In Concert: An Evening Of Songs

Guild Hall

Taylor Mac, the MacArthur Fellow, Kennedy Prize winner, and Pulitzer Prize finalist, visits with with the West Coast premiere of Bark of Millions, an epic four-hour “parade trance extravaganza.”  Bark of Millions is a rock opera meditation on queerness featuring 54 original songs (one song per year since the Stonewall uprising) inspired by queer antecedents throughout world history and performed by a diverse cast of 13 ensemble members and a band of 11 musicians. As in his legendary retelling of American history, 24-Decade History of Popular Music, Mac, his cast, and longtime collaborators Matt Ray (music) and Machine Dazzle (costumes) use music, dance, and drag spectacle to subvert and deconstruct conventional narratives, and joyfully, transgressively celebrate queerness in all its forms. “Taylor Mac uses his many talents to get us to listen, think and feel. The effect is heartening, vital and liberating” (The London Times).

Taylor Mac & Matt Ray’s Bark of Millions

University of California, Berkeley

From the vanity of Mx Viv:

What do we do when the shits hit our fans? Get loud, get angry, and SHINE ON!!

If I hadn’t already lived through so much of this desperate anti-queer, trans, and drag rhetoric in my lifetime I might be more upset rather than disgusted. But after putting us through hell these wretched cowards always get beat back into hiding.

Justin Vivian Bond: What Have You Done for Me Legislately?

Joe's Pub

Singer, songwriter, performing and recording artist, Steffanie Christi’an, has been said to “cast an irresistible spell with her voice by fitting a whole song’s worth of emotion and expressive inflection into a single verse or just one melodic riff.” In celebration of the 30-year anniversary of the release of Tori Amos’ first album, Little Earthquakes, Christi’an will perform the album in its entirety at Joe’s Pub.

Steffanie Christi’an performs Little Earthquakes by Tori Amos, feat. Matt Ray

For her Diamond Jubilee celebrating 3 score swings around le merveilleux soleil (that’s French!), Mx Viv and their band will be delivering a shimmering birthday bouquet of a dozen specially chosen songs for their friends and fans at Joe’s Pub from May 4-14th.

Justin Vivian Bond: Nose Gays

In an inspired flight of fancy Mx Bond creates a play list for Julie London’s imagined, unrecorded record, A Julie Valentine, the follow-up to her under-played, and under-appreciated 1968 pop album, Yummy, Yummy, Yummy.

Yummy, Yummy, Yummy was Julie’s final release from Liberty Records, known as The House That Julie Built. Julie became a star and put Liberty Records on the map with the mega-hit, now classic torch song “Cry Me a River,” written by her high school sweetheart Arthur Hamilton and released in 1955 on her eponymous record, Julie Is Her Name

Justin Vivian Bond Delivers A Julie Valentine

Justin Vivian Bond and band close out the year of “Mary” with a late-term celebration of Patriarchy’s favorite pinup and the babe she called Jesus - all that and myrrh.!

Matt Ray

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Events

Past events

Sep 27, 2024

Taylor Mac In Concert: An Evening Of Songs · Guild Hall

23 - 25 Feb, 2024

Taylor Mac & Matt Ray’s Bark of Millions · Cal Performances

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