Songstresses From the Edge — Jody Redhage (voice & cello), and Molly Thompson (voice, accordion & piano) — will perform on Sunday, October 25, 2009 at 4:00 pm as part of Old First Concerts at the Old First Church, 1751 Sacramento St. (at Van Ness), San Francisco, CA. TIckets are $15 general admission and $12 for seniors & students. Call (415) 474-1608 or visit www.oldfirstconcerts.org. Discounted parking available at Old First Parking Garage, 1725 Sacramento Street with validation from box office. Wheelchair Accessible.

Jody Redhage and Molly Thompson share a love for setting 20th and 21st century poetry into song, and present a concert of their original music that toes the increasingly permeable line between classical composition and more popular genres. For the first half of the concert, Jody Redhage is playing as a solo artist—all pieces she’s written for voice and cello using modern American poetry as lyrics. Molly Thompson will perform with a chamber ensemble performing her original compositions.

Brooklyn-based composer and singer Molly Thompson writes music that Global Rhythm calls “hauntingly beautiful” and the NewYork Times describes as “rhapsodic music with—jazzy outbursts and exuberant chaos.” Her most recent album, Ash (2007, WhiteLime Records), is a collection of eleven songs that feature what Time Out Chicago describes as Thompson’s “sultry voice, somewhere between Lotte Lenya and the pop icon Nico…Equal parts smoky lounge music, turn-of-the-century Berlin cabaret and Medieval chanson…”

Called an “adventurous cello songstress” by Time Out NY, cellist, composer, and vocalist Jody Redhage sings and plays cello and composes for her ensemble Fire in July. Musicworks magazine calls Redhage “A new music dynamo…Redhage is cultivating a growing repertoire of indie art song that breaches genre boundaries and makes for stirring listening.” Her debut album All Summer in a Day (2007, New Amsterdam Records) is called “freewheeling, slightly edgy…highly rewarding and worthwhile (All Music Guide).