Tenderloin Museum 10th Anniversary
Celebrating the “Sounds of the Tenderloin” with
legendary Bay Area saxophonist, composer, arranger, & bandleader
Howard Wiley
& an all-star house band featuring
Elijah Green (Bass), LJ Holomon (Keys), Dante ‘Taz’ Roberson (Drums), Tim Landis (Guitar)
with very special guests
Lady Bianca, Kev Choice, Tongo Eisen-Martin, John Handy, Marvin K. White, The Glide Ensemble ft. Ashling Cole, Lavay Smith, & Chris Siebert
July 16, 2025
Doors at 7pm | Show at 7:30pm
at the Great American Music Hall | 859 O’Farrell St. SF, CA 94109
Tickets $25 GA / $40 Balcony | Purchase via See Tickets (on sale 6/25)
TLM Members get $15 off any ticket (+1)
Tenderloin Museum turns 10 on July 16, 2025! To celebrate, TLM invited homegrown master musician Howard Wiley to organize a musical tribute to the neighborhood ft. an intergenerational revue of legendary performers highlighting how the TL has shaped the Bay Area’s music scene.
On July 16, 2015, a small history museum opened its doors with an unlikely but vital mission to promote the history and character of San Francisco’s Tenderloin, the city’s most overlooked and misunderstood neighborhood. Over the ensuing decade, the Tenderloin Museum forged a reputation as a hub for community-driven programming and exhibitions that explore the neighborhood’s urbanism, activism, multiculturalism, vice, and resilience… and, of course, its vibrant arts scene past and present. Since 2022 (with grants from Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and later the CA Cultural and Historical Endowment’s Museum Grant Program), TLM’s “Sounds of the Tenderloin” sought to animate the neighborhood’s undersung cultural history through live music. Over 50+ programs later, this series created paid performance opportunities for some 200 working artists at the museum, supported the TL’s iconic venues during the pandemic recovery, and brought free music to the streets of the neighborhood for all to enjoy. To celebrate the day of the museum’s 10th anniversary, TLM presents a capstone in the Sounds of the Tenderloin series at the historic Great American Music Hall, featuring a concert of local luminaries who have been touched by the TL and shaped the neighborhood in return.
The show is organized by one of the Bay Area’s great saxophonists, Howard Wiley, who brings a deep perspective and connection to the TL that make him an ideal conduit to survey the neighborhood’s rich musical legacy. Wiley was born in Berkley, graduated from the prestigious Berklee College of Music with honors, and quickly blossomed into an evocative solo artist and valuable collaborator who toured internationally, recorded, and performed with artists like Miss Lauryn Hill, Sheila E, Cory Henry, Christian McBride, and many more. Wiley is fresh off his second season of critically acclaimed performances as Resident Artistic Director for the SF Jazz Festival, and was featured in E-40’s Tiny Desk Concert for NPR Music, which racked up over a million views since it went live this June and brought the Bay Area’s Hyphy movement into the national spotlight. He is not only a prodigious player but also a composer, arranger, and bandleader with a keen understanding of musical history. Wiley is an innovative synthesist of musical styles: while he’s steeped in jazz, he soulfully bridges gospel, funk, R&B, and hip-hop in his own, well-earned style. Jazz you can dance to. Saturday night and Sunday morning.
A fixture of the Bay Area’s live music scene, Wiley Tenderloin bona fides stand out. He has a long history performing at GLIDE Memorial Church. He’s cut countless records at the historic Hyde Street Studios. He’s been a regular at the cozy Black Cat Jazz Club and graced the big stage at Great American Music Hall. In 2023, he was in the house band for The Tina Turner Musical at the Golden Gate Theater as part of BroadwaySF. His experiences as a working musician and community member capture the multitudes contained in our small but mighty neighborhood. As such, TLM asked Wiley to organize a musical tribute to the Tenderloin on our big day.
On July 17, 2025, Wiley returns to the Great American with his all-star band and an intergenerational revue of legendary Bay Area performers whose musical lives have arced through the neighborhood and its iconic venues, from the Black Hawk Jazz Club to GLIDE to Hyde Street Studios/Wally Heider and Great American Music Hall itself. Special guests include the Bay Area’s queen of the blues and gospel Lady Bianca Thornton; multi-talented rapper, pianist, producer, and frequent Wiley collaborator Kev Choice; Fillmore jazz legend and saxophonist John Handy; poet, activist, educator, and SF’s 8th poet laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin; the poet, public theologian, and current Minister of Celebration at GLIDE Memorial Church Marvin K. White, the legendary GLIDE Ensemble choir featuring vocalist Ashling Cole; and vocalist Lavay Smith and pianist Chris Siebert, who have regularly featured Wiley in their swingin’ big band the Red Hot Skillet Lickers for over two decades.
Don’t miss this one-night-only engagement of some of the Bay Area’s finest musicians celebrating the neighborhood at the heart of San Francisco, the Tenderloin, and 10 years of the Tenderloin Museum.
This “Sounds of the Tenderloin” program is made possible by support from the Specified General Fund for the Museum Grant Program under the California Cultural and Historical Endowment. Many thanks to our community partners: Del Seymour’s Tenderloin Blackness, Hyde Street Studios, and GLIDE.