This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Community Corner

Art Works Downtown presents "Midnight in Paris"

Art Works Downtown presents Midnight in Paris; an unforgettable anniversary party celebrating our 17th year - inspired by the movie directed by Woody Allen -highlighting the art scene of Paris in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Art lovers from around the Bay Area will be attending an extravaganza like no other filled with art, gourmet food and wine, live music, multiple venues creatively decorated in the Parisian theme, and untold special appearances and surprises.

Date:  Saturday, October 19, 2013

Hours of Event: 7:00 PM–Midnight

Purchase your tickets now as quantities are limited. You can purchase your tickets online from the link provided below.

Find out what's happening in San Rafaelwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Find out what's happening in San Rafaelwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

As part of the exciting fundraising event, Art Works Downtown is creating a wall of artworks for silent auction. We need artists to help us accomplish this goal. Proceeds go directly to Art Works Downtown to broaden and deepen our community’s engagement with art.

  •  Dimension of artworks need to be less than 18” (including frame)
  • 2D and 3D works welcome, but all work must hang on a wall
  • Theme is open, but please consider Midnight in Paris
  • All submissions are donations to Art Works Downtown
  • Now through October 5: Drop off artwork at 1337 Fourth St. San Rafael, CA   94901
  • Please include title, price, medium, short artist biography
  • Please make sure the art is ready to hang
  • Artwork submitted early will appear on the silent-auction website page. To  appear on the page, please email a jpg image of your artwork donation to info@artworksdowntown.org

Benefits
  • Support one of the hardest working non-profit art centers in Marin
  • Exposure to a new and quality audience

Auction
Your work will be on display for silent auction October 19, 7–11 pm. Event attendees will be able to read your brief artist biography as they consider their bids. All works will start with a value determined by the event auction committee. At 11 pm the auction will close and all works will be packaged for the new owners to take home as they exit the event.

Music
Midnight in Paris will include live music performances from the following artists-
The Baguette Quartette plays the music that was heard in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s on street corners and in cafes and dance halls. Led by accordionist Odile Lavault, the group’s repertoire includes a variety of Parisian musical styles of that era. The valse musette is a blend of folk music from Auvergne and light Parisian music from the 19th century. Gypsy musicians added a jazzy flavor. It was music of the working class. The java is a Parisian dance from the 1920s. It is danced with small steps, without twirling, with hands on the partner's derriere. The foxtrot comes from the march and polka.The paso doble is reminiscent of Spanish music played for the corridas, and the dance mimics the interplay between the toreador and the bull. The tango became popular in the dance halls around 1920. The realistic songs depict life in Paris and the "banlieues". Their often melancholic subject matter includes prostitutes down on their luck, thugs, misdeeds, unrequited love, murders, and other familial happenings.

Marcelo Puig and Seth Asarnow are a tango duo of accordion and guitar. Tango became wildly popular in Paris in the years after its introduction in 1910. Parisian women saw the tango as liberating, and tango quickly surpassed the waltz as the preferred dance in France among all classes. Paris embraced this exotic arrival from Argentina as enthusiastically as it would jazz from the United States a few years later. French musicians dressed as gauchos or Brazilian cariocas. There was even a popular drink, the mixing of beer and grenadine, called the tango, which is still available today in Paris. “The European gaze conditioned the evolution of the dance and the way the opposition between wild and sophisticated eroticism was presented,” Eduardo Archetti wrote of the era. Tango also had a huge impact on women‘s dress. The flexible tango corset led many women to abandon orthodox fixed corsetry.

Michel Michelis is a French-born solo performer of French street and cabaret songs, which he sings while playing a barrel organ at festivals and other venues.As a teenager in the south of France, Michel set out on his own and moved to Paris. There began a lifetime of creative endeavors in music and as an actor in theater, radio, and film (voice of the French car Tomber in Pixar’s Cars 2). He settled in San Francisco in the 1990s. In Paris several years ago, Michel discovered the 19th century mechanical musical instrument called an “Orgue de Barbarie” and immediately fell in love with it. A French specialist in old instruments built him a unique copy of the magic box, which operates somewhat like a player piano. Michel has used it since then to perform the old French cabaret songs, such as those sung by Edith Piaf.

Dave Marty is an inductee to the National 4-String Banjo Hall of Fame and is an internationally known banjo master. The Manouche, or Gypsy people who lived on the outskirts of society but worked in the heart of Paris, introduced the banjo to the local dance halls. The legendary Gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt first performed and recorded as a banjo accompanist. Over the past 50 years Dave’s exuberant playing has taken “Mr. Smooth” across Europe and America in clubs and concert venues and around the world on cruise ships. His early inspirations were music from the 19th century through early Dixieland, traditional jazz, and the big band era. Expect to hear Dave’s take on French songs such as C'est Si Bon, Hinky Dinky Parlez-Vous, La Mer, and La Vie En Rose.

Sauce Piquante (pronounced "pee-KAWNT") plays the traditional French-language dance music of Southwest Louisiana—the earthy, impassioned music of fais-do-do’s, bals de maison, and country dance halls. Louisiana  French culture is rooted in the Acadian people who migrated there in the mid-1700s from the present-day Nova Scotia after expelled for refusing to swear allegiance to the British crown. Led by accordionist and singer Blair Kilpatrick, author of a memoir of her journey into Cajun music, the band conjures the spirit of the old days … vieux temps passé, when everyone – Cajun and Creole - just called it “French music.” 



We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?