Sunday Worship

Sunday, July 6, 10:00 AM, Sanctuary

Join us for worship in-person in our historic Sanctuary or online. Worships are livestreamed on our YouTube channel - click here to view our Sunday worship livestream! Our Sanctuary is ADA accessible and listening devices are available. FCCLB is a liberal, Open & Affirming and unabashedly progressive church in the United Church of Christ denomination. Parking is available in the Civic Center parking structure on Broadway Ave & Third Street; we validate parking on Sunday morning. 

Concerts in America presents Derek Gripper

July 26, 2025, 7:30pm

Derek Gripper has long occupied an unusual place in South African music. A classically trained guitarist with a long self training in traditional African forms, he first gained international recognition by transcribing the music of the 21-string West African kora for solo guitar—rendering the layered complexity of Malian masters like Toumani Diabaté onto six strings, subtly redrawing the boundaries of classical guitar. In his current work, Gripper turns his attention to the less acknowledged African roots of minimalism, tracing a throughline from the cyclical structures of mbira and kora music to the repetitive frameworks of Western minimalists like Steve Reich. But rather than treat this connection as ethnomusicological footnote, he makes it the engine of a new performance practice. Live, Gripper builds multi layered structures in real time using analogue tape delay and tape loops —recalling not only the mechanical processes Reich himself used in early phasing works like It’s Gonna Rain, but also the communal dynamics of Zimbabwean mbira performance. Specifically, he draws on the Zimbabwean “kutsinera” technique, in which multiple players interlock and double phrases to create a shifting, interwoven whole. Gripper replicates this interplay in duets with tape, creating a subtle hybrid language where improvisation, tradition, and analogue processes collide. Keep an eye out for a discount code featured in next week's Pilgrim. Click here to purchase tickets, and for more information.