I’ll Show You the Night

$25 All-ages, Family-friendly.

Doors open at 7:00 p.m. and show starts at 7:30 p.m.

“Where will we find shelter, / When there’s no light to guide us home? / Where is the North Star? / Polaris, where did you go?”

“I’ll Show You the Night” by Brightdarkdawn / Anne Carol Mitchell

The Spring Concert Series continues with I’ll Show You the Night as part of International Dark Sky Week. Join us under the stars in Chabot’s state-of-the-art Planetarium for an evening of music, poetry, and storytelling in celebration of the night sky and natural darkness in an age of artificial light.

The concert brings into focus questions of belonging to the natural world and the cosmos through an interplay of music, poetry, and performance art from cultural and queer traditions, as well as actual telescopes — coinciding with Chabot’s weekly Free Telescope Viewings. The audience will be invited to join the storytelling in conjuring memories, dreams, and longings of connection to the night sky.

Performances include Bay Area psychedelic hip hop head Amani Will / Wa Ama Ni Um, queer folk musician Brightdarkdawn (Anne Carol Mitchell), artist and creative consultant Jason Wyman (aka Queerly Complex), South Indian Carnatic composer Sindhu Natarajan, queer Scottish-American folk musician and filmmaker Maya McNeil, and queer movement and performance artist SJ Cook.

Amani Will / Wa Ama Ni Um

Amani Will / Wa Ama Ni Um is a Bay Area, Psychedelic, Ancient Futurist, Tender, frEQ folk, Hip-Hop Heads exploring the Universe.

Anne Carol

Brightdarkdawn is a project of songwriter/composer Anne Carol Mitchell, a queer woman living in Sebastopol, California, cultivating food and community with her partner, 7-month-old daughter, and ornery orange tuxedo tabby. Anne crafts music with the aim of awakening care and healing for the living earth. Her music is reminiscent of folk traditions in the vein of Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell, and Buffy Sainte-Marie. She has toured throughout the western states and shared the stage and studio with notable artists including musicians Ani DiFranco and poet Judy Grahn (a woman is talking to death), as well as others. More at brightdarkdawn.com.

Jason Wyman

Jason Wyman (they / them) is Queerly Complex, an artist practicing the art of relating to one’s self, each other, and the Cosmic Mysteries. They were born upon the Land of 10,000 Lakes on what they are coming to know as Turtle Island, who settled on Yelamu, which is also called San Francisco. Their name means healer, or so they’ve been told since a young child. Wyman did not believe it until their father, Michael (Mike) James Wyman, and them mended their selves and one another as Jason’s dad died of mantle cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma across a screen and a country over all of 2020. 

Queerly Complex’s  work has shown in homes, in public transit plazas, in secret gardens, in parks and along water’s edge, on streets and alleys, and in institutions, whose names do not matter. They are proud to be a Co-Founder of Tree of Change with Crystal Mason, a Co-Founder of the Immigrant Artist Network with Rupy C. Tut and a collective of 23 immigrant artists, and a Co-Founder of the Culture Tending Collective with Vanessa Rodrigues Minero, Wendy Martinez Morroquin, and Crystal Mason.

Maya McNeil

Maya McNeil (they/her) is a queer Scottish-American singer, songwriter, healer, and filmmaker born in Huichin/Oakland, California. Shaped by the rich and vast roots music of Turtle Island and various diasporas and homelands, they hold folk music as a political act and the precious story trove of the people. 

McNeil’s music and art invites listeners to open, just a little bit more, to the mystery that is ever beyond our current perception, but we feel within. Their recent full length album, ‘Waiting For The Light To Change’ is a multi genre lense on the experiences of loss, illness, radical joy, violence, the permanence of deforestation, the false power of patriarchy, and where our choices and strength lie in showing up for change, care, and a resilient future together.

In song craft and in healing work, their path is dedicated to the collective healing and repairing of historical legacies recovering from our systemic separation from the Earth. McNeil is here to cast their voice and hands with grace and support for the living heart of this shifting world. 

Album hyperlink: https://mayamcneil.bandcamp.com/album/waiting-for-the-light-to-change Website: www.mayamcneil.com ▼ Instagram: @maya_mcneil_music

Sindhu Nataranjan

Sindhu Natarajan is a vocalist and composer, who hails from a distinguished musical lineage. She began her formal training in Carnatic music under the tutelage of her aunts, Vasanthi Kannan and Raji Gopalakrishnan, and her grandfather, P.V. Natarajan. Additionally, she studied Bharatanatyam under Mythili Kumar of Abhinaya Dance Company in San Jose.

Over the past fifteen years, Sindhu has enthralled Bay Area audiences with her captivating vocal performances. Beyond her solo endeavors, she has composed music for and collaborated with prominent South Asian dance companies and choreographers nationwide. Sindhu is also a prolific independent composer, passionately creating music that seamlessly blends the intricate nuances of Carnatic music with various genres. 

A dedicated advocate for immigrant artists, Sindhu serves on the advisory board of The Immigrant Artist Network, where she helps foster a sense of community and empowers fellow creatives to share their unique perspectives. She currently lives in the Bay Area with her husband and two daughters.

SJ Cook

SJ Cook aka Frankie Velvet they /them/she /her: Frankie is an artist, writer, holistic practitioner, and lover of life among other things. They tell stories and channel feelings through movement, music, and poetry. Their art is one of bending, blending, and expanding gender through evoking sensuality, passion, play, ceremony, connection and fun. They also foster events for other lgbtqia folx to come forward in their brilliance and shine, be heard and seen, such as annual autumn variety shows and is an organizer of Petaluma’s annual Pride festival.

*Run-time: 90mins with no intermission.