Junkyard Symphony

Although more than 65 artists have shuffled through the rubbish at the dump (the city-run one, not our sidewalks), the S.F. Recycling & Disposal Artist-in- Residence program still has an air of mystery. Must be the exhibits, which take place at the Solid Waste Transfer and Recycling Center near Monster Park (definitely not part of the First Thursday art crawl) and are restricted to blink-and-you'll-miss-it weekend openings. Tonight, however, it's moving uptown, bringing "Music and Videos from the Dump" to Herbst Theatre. Part of the reason might be the acoustics: The night features a performance of Nathaniel Stookey's Junkestra, which was created during Stookey's residency early this year and has been wowing crowds ever since. For this show, he's lured the percussion section of the S.F. Symphony Youth Orchestra and baton-handler Benjamin Schwartz, the S.F. Symphony's resident conductor. They'll have to wrench music from Stookey's self-described "sonorous collection" of junk, which includes "pipes, pans, mixing bowls, bottles, serving trays, deck railings, dresser drawers, oil drums, bike wheels, saws, garbage cans, bathroom fixtures, birdcages, and shopping carts." But nobody is worried: Stookey says he found "a richer palette of timbre and pitch than anything I could have foreseen or designed." The rest of the night is given over to short videos from program artists, including "I Am Your Appetite" by Banker White, "Dining at the Dump" by Robin Lasser, "The Why of the System" by Nomi Talisman, and untitled video works by Reddy Lieb and Don Ross.
Fri., Nov. 16, 8 p.m., 2007