Arts and Ends: Stern Grove Festival to bring the funk

The rest of the Stern season won’t be announced until May, but the San Francisco outdoor festival is focusing on the opening-day bash, which includes the preshow Big Picnic Party.

Tickets to that fundraiser, which start at $325, offer patrons reserved picnic-table seating for the concert and other amenities not available to the multitudes who pour into the meadow and plop down where they may.

In addition to the widely sampled 1973 hit “Jungle Boogie,” which director Quentin Tarantino used in “Pulp Fiction” and the Muppets covered, Kool & the Gang (which still features most of its key original members) undoubtedly will play its biggest hit, “Celebration,” the all-purpose 1980 anthem heard at weddings, football games, political conventions and bar mitzvahs.

The band’s founding saxophonist, Ronald Bell, who also goes by his Muslim name Khalis Bayyan, told Billboard the initial idea for the tune came from reading the Quran.

“I was reading the passage where God was creating Adam, and the angels were celebrating and singing praises,” he said.

Lisa Mezzacappa’s ongoing composition “Organelle” sets up structures for musical improvisation inspired by the patterns and passage of time in nature, the human body and the cosmos.

“It’s a series of one-minute cycles mimicking the life cycle of the mayfly, with its short moments of glory,” says Mezzacappa, the Berkeley bassist and composer, who adds a new section to the piece March 9 at the Exploratorium, with music based on the bay tides lapping at the museum’s pier.

“I have a soft spot for tree trunks, which grow a layer of cambium every year,” says the composer, alluding to the rings in the ancient redwoods at Muir Woods and the diagrams showing at what point in a tree’s life the Magna Carta was written.

Equally fluent in the ways of Wes Montgomery and Jimi Hendrix, the blues, the Beatles and Indian music, Larry was a passionate player — and a sharp, funny, forthright man — who never held back.

“Larry had many ups and downs in his life, from world fame at a young age, to a self-destructive fall from grace, followed by a rebirth through sobriety, Buddhism and dedication to music,” Brooks continued.