Reggie Watts is an internationally renowned Musician/Comedian/Writer/Actor who most recently starred as the bandleader on CBS’sThe Late Late Show with James Corden. Using his formidable voice, looping pedals, and his vast imagination, Watts blends and blurs the lines between music and comedy, wowing audiences with performances that are 100% improvised.

Vinyl Nights bring a fresh spin to midweek evenings with live sets by DJ Works! Join us in the Living Room every Tuesday & Thursday at 7PM.

Wine Down will offer Happiest Hours specials all night--$9 select wines, $7 select beer, $5 off carafes, pitchers, and cheese & meat feasts--plus a Q&A with local author Aisha Harris about her book Wannabe: Reckonings with the Pop Culture That Shapes Me at 6:30 pm.

Bay Area partymakers DJ Lady Ryan and DJ 7evenB weave a night of music, liberation & connection this Downtown First Thursday at 111 Minna Gallery with KALW

• 5:30: Happy Hour with DJ 7evenB Bay Area native DJ 7evenB has been a voracious music lover from a very young age. Collecting records as a youth led him to pick up his first set of turntables in 1999 and he hasn’t put them down since. He has opened for the likes of RZA and played on radio stations around the country in as well as performing live sets from coast to coast.

• 8:00: DJ Lady Ryan Live Broadcast Dance Party. Lady Ryan is a Bay Area favorite – inspiring a sense of safety, joy, and belonging as a spiritual conductor and dedicated professional. Her passion for music can be heard throughout the Bay Area and beyond, whether she’s energizing the crowd at Warriors and Valkyries games, hosting one of her celebrated Soulovely or Sweetspot parties, or gracing the airwaves of 91.7 KALW in San Francisco.

• On View - The Howellman Comes Here Experience a vivid, joyful new body of work by artist Jay Howell, most known for his creative design on ‘Bob’s Burgers.’

• Outside - Curbside Karaoke. Choose from thousands of songs and hit us with your best shot. Maybe you want to dance with somebody. Or just listen if you want it that way.

Join us for an evening of sound performances from Pamela Z and Wobbly. Pamela Z presents a performance that draws on her pioneering practice as a composer, performer, and media artist to process her voice in real time, building dense and intricate sonic layers through live digital looping. Blending experimental extended vocal techniques with sampled concrète sounds, she uses the voice as both material and system; reorienting perceptual structures and inviting listeners to reconsider how sound, language, and technology shape the way we experience our immediate environment.

Jon Leidecker (aka Wobbly) makes music with anything that listens, charting the shrinking distances between music and recordings, as well as musicians and their tools. Pamela Z and Wobbly will join forces for a mesmerizing, boundary-pushing performance to close the show on an unforgettable note.

The performance begins at 7pm. Galleries are free and open to public from 5–8pm.

MoAD celebrates our dynamic arts & culture neighborhood in conjunction with Downtown First Thursdays. Join us every First Thursday of the month for free admission to the exhibitions and programming at the museum from 4-8pm. Be sure to check out the street party on Second Street between Market & Howard!‍

You will have free access to our current exhibitions, UNBOUND: Art, Blackness & the Universe and Jasmine Ross: Beauty Plus.5-8pm MoAD Mix: Currents -- What the Water Remembers. An in-person immersive journey jeaturing Natalya Janay Schoaf and Oakland-based DJ Kream. Join us for a three-hour activation inspired by Yemaya, the nurturing, protective Orisha of the ocean.

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Sofia Kourtesis is a Peruvian-born, Berlin-based producer, DJ, and activist whose music draws from her Latin American roots and Berlin’s club culture, merging house, techno, and organic textures to create a sound that is both intimate and expansive.

Vinyl Nights bring a fresh spin to midweek evenings with live sets by DJ Works! Join us in the Living Room every Tuesday & Thursday at 7PM.

Wine Down will offer Happiest Hours specials all night--$9 select wines, $7 select beer, $5 off carafes, pitchers, and cheese & meat feasts--plus DJ TASH and DJ SNKR will be spinning beats from 6 - 9 PM

Bay Area originals Wonway Posibul and Stanley Ipkuss transport you to new groove frontiers, and Bob’s Burgers artist Jay Howell drops a new exhibit of drawings at 111 Minna Gallery with KALW.

• 5:30 - 7:30 - Stanley Ipkuss. Oakland based producer Stanley Ipkuss starts the night with a mesmerizing all vinyl journey through hip-hop beats, deep instrumentals, and house cuts.

• 7:30 - 10:30 - Wonway Posibul. Lock in with DJ Wonway Posibul for a high-octane, groove-soaked dance set -- live at 111 Minna and blasting on 91.7 FM.

• On View - The Howellman Comes Here Experience a vivid, joyful new body of work by artist Jay Howell, most known for his creative design on ‘Bob’s Burgers.’

• Outside - Curbside Karaoke. Choose from thousands of songs and hit us with your best shot. Maybe you want to dance with somebody. Or just listen if you want it that way.

Krys Bobrowski & Karen Stackpole: Gliss Glass & Gongs

Join us for a deep sonic journey, as Krys Bobrowski & Karen Stackpole’s water-filled vessels and amplified gongs stir a transcendent soundtrack for imagination.

Bobrowski and Stackpole, long-time collaborators in the improvising quartet Vorticella, organically formed a duo combining Stackpole’s Gongs with Bobrowski’s Gliss Glass, an invented instrument of her own design that consists of water-filled glass vessels mounted on telescoping stands that are interconnected with tubes and valves. By varying the height of the vessels and opening and closing the valves, Bobrowski can dynamically alter the pitch of the sound by changing the level of the water as the instrument is played via friction, mallets, bare hands, and splashes. The sounds are captured via piezo pickups and amplified. The Gliss Glass blends extremely well with the sound of the Gongs played by Stackpole, who employs various techniques with friction mallets, bows, and other implements.

The performance begins at 7pm. Galleries are free and open to public from 5–8:30pm.

Tickets: Free with registration

The Museum of the African Diaspora

MoAD celebrates our dynamic arts & culture neighborhood in conjunction with Downtown First Thursdays. Join us every First Thursday of the month for free admission to the exhibitions and programming at the museum from 4-8pm.

Current Exhibit: UnBound

Museum Free Admission: First Thursday of the month, 4PM - 8PM

Register

Whether it’s the culturally rich renaissance of the 30s, or the swagged out fashion of 2000s rap crews, there’s a distinct flair to the New York borough. “It’s debonair. It’s a swag. It’s very distinct,” says Austin Millz. Who – having been raised in the borough – is bringing that flamboyant energy to the world, via his increasingly smooth, upscale dance music cuts.

Vinyl Nights bring a fresh spin to midweek evenings with live sets by DJ Works! Join us in the Living Room every Tuesday & Thursday at 7PM.

Wine Down will offer Happiest Hours specials all night--$9 select wines, $7 select beer, $5 off carafes, pitchers, and cheese & meat feasts--plus DJ TASH and DJ SNKR will be spinning beats from 6 - 9 PM

Join us for a performance by Zekarias Musele Thompson as part of our Downtown First Thursday free concert series.

For Spatial Facilitation (The Artist Is Presence) #3, Musele Thompson responds to the architectural features of YBCA’s Gallery 2 with their saxophone, while simultaneously responding to pre-recorded sounds from the text-based work Remnants of Memory (Robert and Me). The performance reflects upon the architextual condition of the gallery space and the encounter with ideas of the art object in a space temporarily without them. Musele Thompson will be joined by their dear friend Phillip Laurent in a duet.

This performance is part of Thomspon’s ongoing exploration of spatial facilitation. A term of art in physiology, spatial facilitation refers to stimuli that contribute to the accurate processing of visual information. Artist Zekarias Musele Thompson expands the term to apply to all forms of sensory perception. Spatial Facilitation is an ongoing project of mapping clearer vision through walking, noticing, breathing, and the saxophone; ANALOG SOLUTIONS FOR ANALOG PROBLEMS.

The performance begins at 7pm. Galleries are open to public from 5–8:30pm.

KALW X 111 Minna: Downtown First Thursday 

Martin Luther McCoy performs new music, Wonway Posibul spins a live broadcast dance party, and Jay Howell releases a new body of artwork at 111 Minna Gallery with KALW.

6:30: Martin Luther McCoy. The rebel soul visionary performs tunes from his new album and shares his music journey in a special live session with KALW’s Music Editorial Director Tshego Letsoalo.

8:00: DJ Wonway Posibul. Go on a live broadcast dance journey to the grooviest corners of the musical universe with DJ Wonway Posibul at 111 Minna & on 91.7 FM.

Plus: 
The Howellman Comes Here. Experience a vivid, joyful new body of work by artist Jay Howell, most known for his creative design on ‘Bob’s Burgers inside 111 Minna Gallery. 

Karaoke on Keys. Sing karaoke accompanied by a live piano outside 111 Minna Gallery with our friends at Community Music Hangout.

The Museum of the African Diaspora

MoAD celebrates our dynamic arts & culture neighborhood in conjunction with Downtown First Thursdays. Join us every First Thursday of the month for free admission to the exhibitions and programming at the museum from 4-8pm.

Featured Exhibit: Building Universes

Museum Free Admission: First Thursday of the month, 4PM - 8PM

Register