BYOB, a mask and $20 cash for the cover charge

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Check it out in the live stream on our
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Free Press is a San Francisco based Filipina-led music collective. FPM will perform some songs from their new EP, (expected 3rd quarter release date), reflecting the diversity of San Francisco from everyday experiences of immigrants living in the Tenderloin to housing/human rights issues.

This edition of Free Press features talented female artists, two of which are of Filipina descent.

FPM future events include Kapwa Gardens, events for SOMA Pilipinas, Parks Alliance, the SF Library and women/POC owned businesses.

Please check the FPM website for event and EP updates at www.thefreepressmusic.com

Free Press has played at many loved San Francisco venues. Most recently, Free Press returned to the Golden Gate Park Bandshell to open the Illuminate Friday night jazz series for International Women’s month after playing at the SF Bandshell last year to honor our SF Poet Laureates.

Free Press includes:

Christie Aida is the vocalist, bandleader and songwriter for Free Press Music.  She sings songs in English, Tagalog, French and Spanish and loves learning more songs in other Filipino dialects.  Free Press Music  plays  at multiple San Francisco venues such as Illuminate Jazz Fridays at the Golden Gate Bandshell, Flower Piano in the Botanical Gardens, Bird and Beckett, Concerts at the Cadillac, Club Deluxe, All the Way Dance at the SkyBridge on Stevenson, (Parks Alliance), Britt Marie, The Lost Church, Revolution Cafe, Kapwa Gardens (SOMA Pilipinas), and other SF venues.  Christie sang in various gospel choirs and jazz ensembles such as Glide and the Aida Jazz Trio.  She also builds affordable housing for very low-income to median income residents throughout California.

Mena Ramos is a percussionist specializing in Afro-Cuban folkloric music. She has toured internationally with Amikaeyla Gaston and the Harmonic Rhythms performing a fusion of Afro-Cuban and Brazilian rhythms with African-American spirituals.  Since moving to the Bay Area in 2012, she has performed with the Arenas Dance Company, Pairadocs (w/ Laura Harris), Kaimera Productions, Annette Aguilar and Stringbeans, Javier Navarrete, Christelle Durandy, Francisco Rosales y su Charanga ensemble, Elizabeth Sayre and Michaelle Goerlitz at venues such as the SF Opera House, Oakland City Hall, Oakland Scottish Rite Center, Flower Piano, Bird and Beckett, Grand Lake Studios and Revolution Cafe. She is also a family physician.

Laura Harris plays piano at various venues such as Flower Piano in the San Francisco Botanical Garden, Illuminate Jazz Fridays at the Golden Gate Bandshell and other venues. She also plays with the musical group ILYSB. As the daughter of two musicians and music teachers, she has played piano her whole life. She is also a family physician.

Amelia Catalano plays saxophone and flute with the following bands and venues: The Four Tops, Warren Gale, Steve Turre, Louie Bellson, The Ojays, The Temptations, Patti LaBelle, The Family Stone, Yates Brothers, Contemporary Jazz Orchestra, Morchestra, Carma Big Band, Conrad Herwig, Realistic Orchestra/Jazz Mafia, Mindi Abair, Monica Mancini, Montclair Women’s Big Band, Linda Tillery, Sal Carson Big Band, Pacific Mambo Orchestra, Pamela Rose, Duane Laurence, Jimmy Bosch, Herman Olivera, Los Adolescentes, etc. She performed at the Grammies, Lincoln Center, Jazz on the Hill, Berkeley Front Row Festival, New Orleans By The Bay, San Jose Jazz Festival, KBLX Smooth Jazz Festival, Festival La Familia, Shoreline Blues Festival, Squaw Valley Blues and Brews Festival, Nihonmachi Festival, Women In Salsa, Jazz at Pearl’s, Roccapulco, Rassella’s, Bruno’s, Maiko’s, Montero’s, Alberto’s, The Agenda, The Ramp, Cafe Cocomo, Pier 23, Club Conga, Saratoga Mountain Winery, Villa Montalvo, Gordon Biersch Brewery, The Jazz School, Yoshi’s, Bodega Bay Art + Wine Festival, Metronome Ballroom, Sweets Ballroom, Oakland Art + Soul Festival, Sausalito Art Festival, Brian Culbertson’s Napa Valley Jazz Getaway, SFJAZZ, Coppola winery, Ashkenaz, Crane Pavilion, Concord Pavilion, Freight and Salvage, Oakland Paramount Theatre, etc.

Greg Kehret (bass) was raised in Palo Alto, California. His diverse musical interests have led him to explore many different styles: R&B, Hip Hop, Funk, Jazz, Afro-Cuban, dream pop, Tango, Romani music, Flamenco, and many collaborations with Fandangueros (formerly The Latin Filipino Connection). He graduated from the San Francisco State University School of Music with a Bachelor of Music, emphases on Classical Performance. He also works at LightHouse for the Blind in San Francisco, where he directs the Media and Accessible Design Lab (aka MAD Lab).

Tongo Eisen-Martin, named San Francisco’s eighth Poet Laureate in 2021, is a revolutionary educator and organizer whose work centers on issues of mass incarceration, extrajudicial killings of Black people and human rights.

Tongo has taught at detention centers around the country and at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University, and holds an M.A. from Columbia. His books of poetry include the include the collection from City Lights Blood on the Fog, as well as his debut book, someone’s dead already (Bootstrap Press, 2015), nominated for a California Book Award; and Heaven Is All Goodbyes (City Lights, 2017), which received a 2018 American Book Award, a 2018 California Book Award, was named a 2018 National California Booksellers Association Poetry Book of the Year, and was shortlisted for the 2018 Griffin International Poetry Prize.  In their citation, the judges for the Griffin Prize wrote that Eisen-Martin’s work “moves between trenchant political critique and dreamlike association, demonstrating how, in the right hands, one mode might energize the other—keeping alternative orders of meaning alive in the face of radical injustice… His poems are places where discourses and vernaculars collide and recombine into new configurations capable of expressing outrage and sorrow and love.”