Industrial doom, classic rock, indie folk, acoustic trio, and a world of jazz in East Village, Little Italy, Ramona, Encinitas, College Area
San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival at the Quartyard
October 1
With events taking place over four days in East Village, Tijuana, and Escondido, the San Diego Tijuana International Jazz Festival is responding to political and trade frictions between the U.S. and Mexico with programming that highlights cooperative cultural expression. SDTJ Jazz founder and executive director Daniel Atkinson, a native San Diegan, has produced over 300 concerts, created the annual UCSD Jazz Camp, and served as the director of arts, humanities, and languages for UCSD Extension and as director of the concert series Jazz at the Athenaeum. Atkinson spearheaded SDTJ’s creation with electric guitarist-bassist Julian Plascencia, founder of the Tijuana Jazz & Blues Festival. For this opening event of the four-day Jazz Festival, the bill includes the Binational Youth Ensemble, a group featuring high school musicians from the Young Lions Jazz Conservatory created by local jazz icon Gilbert Castellano and from Instituto Contemporáneo de Música de Baja California. The program also includes the San Diego debut of rising Tijuana jazz band Colectivo Fronterizo with Baja rapper Fémina Fatal, as well as the L.A. tropi-funk combo Jungle Fire.
Daniel Atkinson
Author & Punisher at the Casbah
October 1
Tristan Shone’s industrial drone-doom one-man band Author & Punisher takes experimental electronic machines and processors and uses his inventions to create a sonic melding of man and machine. The result can be heard on albums such as Ursus Americanus, which came with a video for the single “Terrorbird” (climaxing with Pinback guitarist Rob Crow spewing blood) that helped the record attract attention on multiple international blogs. Shone (who launched an audio gear company called Drone Machines in 2022) won Best Hard Rock Album at the 2013 San Diego Music Awards for his Author & Punisher EP Women & Children. The eighth Author & Punisher studio album, Nocturnal Birding, was released by Relapse Records last October, featuring guitarist Doug Sabolick as a newly official bandmember. The eight songs include “Meadowlark,” “Mute Swan,” and “Titanis,” with the latter track promoted via a music video featuring Kuntari, an Indonesian experimental noise duo known for using modified trumpets and cornets to mimic animal noises and mating calls. The Little Italy bill includes Guiltless.
Author & Punisher
Marilia Maschion Courtesy Tristan Shore
Taz Taylor Band at Ramona Mainstage
October 2
U.K. guitarist Taz Taylor, who moved to San Diego in 1997, was born in Birmingham, England, the same musically fertile town that bred Black Sabbath and Judas Priest. For a time, his local band featured singer Graham Bonnet (Rainbow, MSG/Michael Schenker Group), after he found the fellow Brit rocker living nearby, between San Diego and L.A. Taylor has been known to tap other MSG vets for his own projects, including singer Keith Slack, while his records have included guest players like Deep Purple keyboardist Don Airey. “I grew up in England,” Taylor told the Reader, “and hard rock was very much a niche thing there. I quickly realized hard rock and hair metal, as it was called at the time, was massive here in the ‘80s. It dominated the airwaves. It dominated MTV and VH1, whereas in England, it absolutely did not.” Since settling in Imperial Beach, he’s released a series of guitar-centered albums, all of them carried by multiple overseas labels, including Deja Voodoo, featuring cover art by Michael Schenker Group cover painter Tristan Greatrex, who also created the original MSG logo. The eighth and most recent Taz Taylor Band studio album, The Other Side of Midnight, dropped last year. The Ramona concert is headlined by Count’s 77, featuring Danny “The Count” Koker of Counting Cars and Pawn Stars.
Taz Taylor
Cory Lomberg at American Legion Post 416
October 3
Encinitas-based Cory Lomberg is an experimental mostly-acoustic musician who switches up instruments with every new project. In addition to releasing original music, including local live performances and EP projects, she contributed guest vocals to tracks by other artists such as Sharif Dumani’s “Torrential Downpour.” She has performed at venues around town, including Folk Arts Rare Records, the Soda Bar, and the La Paloma Theatre. Hear new songs by Lomberg at her EP release show in Encinitas, with additional performers slated to appear including L.A. indie pop trio Pillow Fight (which specializes in limited edition 7-inch vinyl releases) and L.A. underground lo-fi project Glue Shoe. Please consider bringing a full-size personal care product to donate to the Community Resource Center. Suggested items include shampoo, conditioner, body wash, deodorant, and toothpaste.
Cory Lomberg
Nathan Hubbard Trio at the Jazz Lounge
October 3
Percussionist Nathan Hubbard’s first major gig was in the late ‘90s leading the quartet Return to One. In 1999, he joined the free jazz quartet Cosmologic and soon after became a member of the Trummerflora Collective of local experimental musicians. The same year, he began performing solo, using percussion and his own homemade amplified instruments. He has branched out as a bandleader, forming the 30-member ensemble Nathan Hubbard Skeleton Key Orchestra, leading several other ensembles, composing music for a variety of performers, playing with the San Diego Chamber Orchestra, and even freelancing in musical theater. The trio for this performance will feature Hubbard on drums and vibraphones paired with acoustic bassist Harley Magsino (Orchid Mantis, Moth & Sons) and electric guitarist Kevin Jones (SDSU Jazz Ensemble). The same lineup can be heard on albums recorded by the threesome such as The Stream, as well as Seeds Of Rivers, which was nominated Best Local Recording at the 2024 San Diego Music Awards. Dinner will be served at 6:15 pm, with the concert set to kick off at 7.
Nathan Hubbard Trio