Galvanize GAFFTA! Benefit with ELEW, Garibaldi, and Eclectic Method December 15, 2011

Celebrate Gray Area Foundation for the Arts' newly minted residency in San Francisco's historic Warfield Building at the 2nd Annual Galvanize Benefit Gala. The evening will bring together GAFFTA's entrepreneurial and creative communities for an upscale rock concert, dinner and art auction at the Warfield Theatre. Join hundreds of creative and sexy Silicon Valley and Bay Area digerati, young professionals, financiers, entrepreneurs and artists to support... the talent, and artistry, of today's cutting edge technologists.

GAFFTA is the nation's leading organization dedicated to furthering the use and advancement of creative technology for social good. In this capacity, we maintain relationships with the world's top academic researchers, innovative corporations, visionary artists, and civic leaders. By continually engaging and connecting this diverse community with challenges and opportunities, we extract forward-thinking technological solutions with proven capacity to create positive change.

This is a Silver Tie event and guests are encouraged to get creative and sexy with silver or gray formal attire.

To contribute and attend please visit: http://gaffta.org/galv...

_____Artist Information_____
ELEW (Eric Lewis)
A modern day pop artist and musical revolutionary, piano iconoclast ELEW is making a substantial impression on the music world with a thunderous new style of playing: an inspired melding of ragtime, rock and pop that he calls Rockjazz. ELEW has toured the world, recorded, and performed continuously with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Elvin Jones, Roy Hargrove, and Cassandra Wilson, among others. He won the 1999 Thelonious Monk International Piano Competition, his mesmerizing piano theatrics even then hinting at the new musical paradigm he would one day create.

Eclectic Method (Live A/V)
The trio's audio-visual mash-ups feature television, film, music and video game footage sliced and diced into blistering, post-modern dance floor events. It's a cyclone of music and images mashed together in a world where Kill Bill fight scenes and Dave Chappelle's Rick James rants are ingeniously cut and looped over bootleg samples, DVD scratches and pumped-up dance anthems. It's a real-time subversion of technology and media performed live on video turntables for what LA Weekly called a "mesmerizing" sensory overload.

Garibaldi
Garibaldi had always combined his passion for music and color, or rhythm and hue, in his artwork. But it wasn't until viewing performance painter Denny Dent's portrait of Jimi Hendrix that Garibaldi discovered how his passion for paint and music could be an inspirational experience for more than just himself. He discovered music-driven-art, and in some ways it discovered him, revealing a portrait of passion and purpose. Garibaldi's synergy of music and art is what makes him unique as a painter and a performer.

_____Venue Information_____
The Warfield, also known as The Warfield Theater, is a 2,250 seat music venue in the heart of San Francisco. In keeping with it's illustrious past, "everyone" has played The Warfield. The entertainment in the 1980s ranged from bands such as The Clash, Grateful Dead and U2, to theatrical productions such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the Cantonese Opera from China. The Warfield, and all of its varied public events has been a beloved San Francisco institution for 86 years with Goldenvoice's new chapter having just begun. The soul of the building ripens with each passing year.