Hyde Street Studios Sessions: Lady Bianca
Thursday November 30, 2023 | performances at 6pm & 7:30pm
At Hyde Street Studios | 245 Hyde St, San Francisco, CA 94102
Experience an intimate live performance inside the historic Hyde Street Studios with Lady Bianca, a Grammy-nominated Gospel and R&B vocalist/pianist, artist, producer and band leader who has an extensive discography cut at the TL’s iconic recording studio.
As part of its Sounds of the Tenderloin live music series, the Tenderloin Museum presents “Hyde Street Studio Sessions,” an intimate live music experience that gives music lovers and history buffs alike the opportunity to experience a local legend perform inside the iconic recording studio that made the “San Francisco Sound.” The inaugural program features Grammy-nominated Blues, Gospel, and R&B artist Lady Bianca, who has recorded extensively at the historic Tenderloin studio and has assembled a special 6 piece ensemble to share music and stories that survey her illustrious career. Not only will audiences be up close and personal with this Bay Area musical luminary, they will get a behind the scenes glimpse at an active recording studio and the dedicated crew of engineers and musicians that create and sustain musical community in the heart of the Tenderloin.
Nestled in what was historically San Francisco’s entertainment district, Hyde Street Studios has been an active recording studio for over 50 years, and throughout that time has stood as a bastion for working musicians, creative collaboration, and independent artistry. Lady Bianca and her band will play two separate sets on the floor of Studio A, Hyde Street’s main live room that drips with vintage vibe and resonates with over 50 years of musical history. The venue is unique, site-specific, and, given the nature of the space, close quarters–there are only 20 seats available for each set!
This program is made possible by support from the Specified General Fund for the Museum Grant Program under the California Cultural and Historical Endowment.
** About Lady Bianca **
A torchbearer for the “Mighty Oakland Sound,” Lady Bianca, performs original songs from the catalog of Magic-O records and StayFree Publishing/BMI, the record label and publishing company she founded with her partner Stanley Lippit. A vocalist/pianist, bandleader, and producer, Lady Bianca is a lifelong working musician. Her roots are in the great music town of Kansas City, and her father taught her Texas Blues as a child; her prodigious talent as a youth earned her a full scholarship to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music at age nine. Bianca's first paying gig was at the age of seventeen with Quinn Harris & The Masterminds and it was Harris who bestowed the title of Lady on Bianca as she was “so pure and conservative”. Since then, Lady Bianca has evolved into an icon in the Bay Area and is widely known as the “Queen of the Blues and Gospel.”
She has amassed a catalog of over 300 songs, and has produced, arranged and recorded 9 albums, including her recent release, “Lady Bianca Sings: Hold on a Little While Longer and Gonna Have A Mighty Good Time (2020), via her own Magic-O Records (“Home of the Mighty Oakland Sound”) label. In 2017, Lady Bianca sang “Oh, Freedom” in the Roots Award-winning documentary Gina’s Journey: The Search for William Grimes and was the featured narrative voice in the Oakland-based documentary Evolution of the Blues. She has performed, recorded and toured internationally as a solo artist and with Frank Zappa, Sly Stone, Van Morrison, John Lee Hooker and Hall of Fame legends Bobby Bland, Willie Dixon, Etta James, Curtis Mayfield, Koko Taylor, Joe Louis Walker and dozens more as a featured opening act, vocal arranger and record producer. Learn more about Lady Bianca and listen to her music via her website.
** About Hyde Street Studios **
Founded in 1969 as Wally Heider Studios in the heart of the Tenderloin, Hyde Street Studios is the longest running multi-room recording studio in the Bay Area. It was the first technologically modern recording studio in San Francisco, and its founder Wally Heider was not only a pioneering recording engineer but also a savvy businessman who saw an opening for a studio that placed creative control in the hands of artists (instead of their labels). The well appointed space attracted independent bands like the Grateful Dead, and a slew of iconic records were cut at Wally Heider, such as the Dead’s American Beauty, CSNY’s Deja Vu, Santana’s Abraxas, and many more. The studio’s freewheeling, convivial atmosphere engendered the “San Francisco Sound,” which meant a “live” feeling coming through on the records: for example, Eric Burdon’s impassioned, LSD fueled vocal performance on “Spill the Wine” with WAR, or Herbie Hancock’s epic, unbridled jazz jams captured in whole thanks to cleverly daisy-chained tape decks.
When Wally Heider officially closed in 1980, local studio owner and songwriter Michael Ward, along with initial partners Tom Sharples and Dan Alexander, took over and kept the space alive as Hyde Street Studios; ever since, Hyde Street Studios has continued the legacy of encouraging creative collaboration and building musical community. Stylistically, the studio grew with the times, too, and the records cut there in the past 42 years reflect a wide spectrum of contemporary recorded music and a deep connection to many of the Bay Area’s local scenes. Dead Kennedys, Flipper, and The Tubes, and later Green Day put Bay Area punk onto tape at Hyde St.; Tupac, Digital Underground, & Del the Funky Homosapien cut records of now classic Bay Area hip-hop. Today, the studio continues to be a robust hub for music making, a haven for working players, writers, and engineers, from local talent to major label stars and national touring acts. Read more about the studio & its history here.