We’re all over the 2026 Noise Pop Fest, February 19-March 1. See our full coverage here.
It seemed like a yawner Thursday night in Fog City. San Franciscans focused on completing their evening duties. Tech bros got off their work bus and headed to Yancy Saloon after a Super Duper burger to catch up on sports. Couples strolled through the Outer Sunset, sipping bubble teas and holding hands. Core Power Yoga attendees toweled off after class and hopped across the Muni tracks at Church and Duboce.
But this was to be a very different night for the Bay Area. Excitement slowly ramped up, then hit a sustained peak when Oakland-born figure skater Alysa Liu won the individual women’s free skate at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina, becoming the first American woman to secure a gold medal in the event since 2002. The pierced and raccoon-haired champion shouted out the region with a medal around her neck.
Once the yoga mamas cleared those tracks, the excitement extended to a train fully packed with hipsters, longhairs, and rockers heading down to Rickshaw Stop as the Noise Pop festivities began. After arriving, the seemingly sold-out crowd never leaped into chaos or ferocious clamor—the mass chose to mimic the pristine tambourine playing of Stayzhe Rodriguez of local SF band Cindy.
Up in Rickshaw’s balcony it felt basement-like. Folks just kicking it, splashed out on the couches, politely inching past one another, exhibiting the utmost “respect the beer”-core values in the cramped seating. Talking shit, gassing up the potential of headliner Pains of Being Pure Of Heart as Cindy droned nonchalantly below with delicate melodic precision, and everyone was fine with it. Band members Karina Gill, Oli Lipton, and Will Smith, along with Rodriguez, bathed in blue spotlights during the set. “Slowcore’’ guided the evening; Rickshaw served as an early greeting section for local music heads to reconnect amid Cindy’s understated bedroom vibe.
On Friday, at SFJAZZ’s Joe Henderson Lab, right up the street from the Rickshaw, a yestermorrow trio called New Jazz Underground—astute young Floridians transplanted to NYC—had a crowd of mostly white-haired attendees nodding appreciatively for the seated performance. Making those mouth tick sounds that translate to “are you kidding me?,” they expressed a collective joy about what the next generation of jazz musicians has to say musically.
The trio is outfitted with Abdias Armenteros on tenor and soprano sax, the youngest member of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Bassist Sebastian Rios, also Miami-born, is the most outspoken and charismatic member of the group—he’s a 2024 ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award-winner. And the very understated Jacksonville-raised drummer TJ Reddick, who most of the night was looking outside at traffic running down Franklin, while keeping impeccable timing, with the lightest of touches, has become a presence of interest among stellar young trap players, working constantly in top New York clubs.
You could not ask for a more diverse set of stage personas, but as musicians, very much aligned and in step with each other as band members and brothers in sound.
In their final show of the two-night sold-out engagement, they played mostly traditional jazz, but in the most studied—the essence not just the notes—type of way. The selections showcased the very heavy second finger of bassist Rios, who kept that bottom locked most of the night by accenting those tones with a no-look pass stare past the bass.
He was there. Sax player Abdias Armenteros had some time-traveling magic tricks of his own. In certain stretches of song, Armenteros would employ rising intensity, using lyrical reading of phrases in a short, stunted manner that he’d actually finish with vocalizing for a second with an audible “huh” and proceed to the next lyrical verse. And then in other stretches, he’d channel the velvet-bluesy sax sorcery of Coleman Hawkins in shapeshifting ease. Such an old soul for such a young trio.
