CANCELLED! Celebrating Women's History Month with Nora Free and Friends

Name: CANCELLED! Celebrating Women's History Month with Nora Free and Friends
Start: 2026-03-28T20:00:00-0700
End: 2026-03-28T22:00:00-0700
Location: The Back Room

Sat, Mar 28, 8pm - 10pm PDT

The Back Room

Berkeley CA, United States

The Back Room

4516 followers · Contact host

Description

*This show has been cancelled at the request of the artist due to illness. We are refunding all tickets purchased to date and apologize for any inconvenience.

In celebration of Women’s History Month, join a supergroup of Bay Area musicians as they honor the incredible legacy of women in jazz. This special evening will showcase compositions by legendary artists such as Geri Allen, Carla Bley, and many others. The performance will also feature original compositions and unique arrangements by members Nora Free and Erika Oba, promising an unforgettable night.

Featuring Erika Oba (piano), Marcy Keene (guitar), Lisa Mezzacappa (bass), and Sylvia Cuenca (drums).

Nora Free is a Oakland based musician and composer. She holds a PhD in composition and theory from the University of Pittsburgh where she was mentored by the great pianist Geri Allen. She has performed extensively across the US and Europe with a wide range of ensembles.

Tickets are $20 in advance and $25 at the door. Children under 12 are free. Advance tickets are available here, or if the show is not sold out, you may purchase your tickets at the door before the show.

Doors open 30 minutes before show time. We accept cash or Venmo only at the door.

The Back Room is an all-ages, BYOB (for those 21+) space, dedicated to (mostly) acoustic music of all kinds. You are welcome to bring your own food and beverages. The venue is ADA accessible. If you need more information or have any questions, please call us: #510-381-1997.

To join our mailing list, please click here.

Please refrain from using your phone during performances, and if you use your camera or video, please disable the flash.

Although masks are no longer required, we strongly encourage their use to keep everyone safe in our intimate space.

Thank you for your support!

Tickets for good, not greed Humanitix dedicates 100% of profits from booking fees to charity

Host information

The Back Room

4516 followers

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When, as a young man in 1981, Sam Rudin moved from his native Philadelphia to the East Bay, he quickly fell in love with the Freight & Salvage, Berkeley’s quirky little 87-seat concert hall.

Filled with comfortable thrift store furniture and an informal ambience of appreciative attentiveness, the Freight was a perfect fit for performers of modest renown and acoustically-based music.

As a solo (albeit high-energy) pianist, Sam’s music fit the bill, and the Freight became Sam’s home base. In the absence of other Freight-like rooms, Sam turned his solo performer attention to the outdoor fair and festival circuit, and later started the jazz/blues band Hurricane Sam & the Hotshots.

Now, maybe it’s all the energy he put into becoming a master piano teacher, or maybe the fair and festival circuit just doesn’t have the right ingredients to nurture a high-profile career. Whatever the reason, despite critical acclaim, four CD’s, and a whole bunch of happy audiences, years later Sam was still a performer of modest renown, and he missed that great little room.

As the Freight grew and expanded, ultimately arriving at the gorgeous 420 seat theater that it occupies today, Sam started to feel that maybe it was up to him to recreate that wonderful small space. No longer a young man, it would be his late-life adventure.

Eventually, he found the perfect spot: a beautiful space with brick walls and vaulted wood ceilings right by the Arts District in downtown Berkeley. As of April 2016, it is open for business, complete with the requisite thrift store furniture.

The space is actually the back room of a larger building, so of course it is called The Back Room, and the tag line on its logo says it all – “an intimate place for music.”

The site, at 1984 Bonita Ave., also functions as Sam’s teaching studio, so if you’re looking for “The Piano Lessons You’ve Always Wanted,” now you know where to find them.