Just as our summer guide listings went to the printer, we received this sad news:
Dear Friends,
We are at an exciting and pivotal moment in our history. The Obama administration’s focus on renewable energy coupled with the need to create jobs for the legions of newly unemployed has created an unprecedented increase in demand for the educational services that the Solar Living Institute provides.
We have seen a surge in interest over the past several months in both our renewable energy courses and our green career workshops and conferences. The recently passed stimulus package includes potential funding for the type of green jobs training that SLI has been providing for almost two decades. With the huge amount of opportunity we have before us we feel it is of paramount importance to step up and focus our attention on continuing to provide as much quality education as possible.
For this reason, we have made the difficult decision to cancel this year’s SolFest so that our staff can focus entirely on our educational mission.
We have many exciting projects and events in the works this year. We are working with an internationally renowned e-learning company towards swiftly expanding our renewable energy course offerings to include on-line distance education. We are executing our grant from a private foundation, and partnering with Solar Richmond to offer solar installation training to low-income folks in the Bay Area. And we are very excited to be working with the City of Ukiah to develop a green jobs training center in Ukiah. These projects and more to come will be demanding our best and we are very excited to be putting our efforts toward them.
We are tremendously energized about the opportunities we have before us and we hope you will join in our excitement about this momentous time for our organization, our country and our future.
We hope to have a party and fundraiser around SolFest time to celebrate our victories and gather the SLI tribe. We will revisit having SolFest in 2010. Stay tuned…
For the Earth,
The Solar Living Institute Staff
In 
There is no greater director-composer partnership in the history of cinema, with the possible exception of Fellini and Rota, than that of Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann. Before their falling out over the score to Torn Curtain in 1966, and Hitchcock’s ruthless dismissal of his co-conspirator in suspense, Herrmann had written 10 years of iconic film music. Among his best-known theme is Psycho, to be performed in a program, titled “Shadows and Light,” this weekend by the New Century Chamber Orchestra. In a program exploring the fears and fevers of the night, including Borodin’s Nocturne, Strauss’ Die Fledermaus and Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik,” director and violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg premieres Clarice Assad’s new commissioned work Dreamscape. Get lost in the stars on Sunday, May 17, at Osher Marin Jewish Community Center. 200 N. San Pedro Road, San Rafael. 5pm. $32–$54. 707.357.1111.Gabe Meline 
New York City’s Prestige Records, while releasing early albums by John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and other jazz pioneers, walked through the damp concrete of Washington Square Park one day and picked up a few straggling folksingers along the way. Among the best and most notorious was raconteur Dave Van Ronk, but Prestige found an unknown gem in Tom Rush. Lasting on Prestige about as long as Ronk, Rush jumped to folk haven Elektra Records in time to release his best record, The Circle Game, featuring songs by Joni Mitchell and James Taylor that came to new life through Rush’s soothing tenor. From that point, Rush became an interpreter of modern songwriters rather than a revivalist looking back, and always makes sure to throw in a few originals for authenticity. He performs songs from his first album in 30 years, What I Know, on Friday, May 15, at the Napa Valley Opera House. 1030 Main St., Napa. 8pm. $35. 707.226.7372.Gabe Meline 
After years spent as the star attraction in the company of “Wild Thing” and “Angel of the Morning” songwriter Chip Taylor, it only seemed natural for the extremely talented wings of Carrie Rodriguez to take flight on a solo career with the release of her acclaimed 2006 album, Seven Angels on a Bicycle. Rodriguez is such a phenomenal fiddle player, mandolinist and singer that it’s easy to overlook any ho-humming over her recent album, She Ain’t Me; the songs, well-written but limply supported by inorganic production in the studio, should have no problem coming to full life onstage. Rodriguez has long been cast as a rising star in these pages, and anyone who caught her opening for Lucinda Williams’ latest tour is also laying their money down. Carrie Rodriguez in the late aughts is like Emmylou Harris in the late ’70s. Go see her if you know what’s good for you on Thursday, May 14, at the Last Day Saloon. 120 Fifth St., Santa Rosa. 8pm. $15. 707.545.2343.Gabe Meline
If the windows at the Hopmonk Tavern are still intact from the massive bass rumble of Bassnectar’s set last week, then the Milgard glass will be grateful for the milder but no less danceable beats purveyed by Andreas Stevens, aka DJ Greyboy, at this week’s Juke Joint. By now a fixture on the West Coast funk and soul scene, Greyboy’s released six albums on the San Francisco Ubiquity label under his own name and four with his live-band offshoot, the Greyboy All Stars. With his breakthrough album, Freestylin’, in 1994, Greyboy was also one of the first crate-digging DJs in the fading days of acid jazz. He’s continued to stay relevant through many different eras since—scratch turntablism, the funk 45 phenomenon, the Kraftwerk revival, the electro-disco 12-inch craze—mostly by sticking to the basic notion that records are made to dance to. He appears with Brooklyn’s retrofunk party band the Pimps of Joytime on Thursday, May 14, at the Hopmonk Tavern. 230 Petaluma Ave., Sebastopol. 9pm. $10. 707.829.7300.Gabe Meline 
