GLIDE proudly invites you to join us at the GLIDE Annual Holiday Jam: Still We Rise, a live, in-person benefit on Thursday, November 18, at the Masonic Auditorium in San Francisco. After a year and a half of upheaval and distancing, the GLIDE Annual Holiday Jam returns to a modified in-person event bringing the community together for music, storytelling, and celebration to support GLIDE’s innovative and life-changing work. Scroll down for details or visit our main event page.

This inspirational event will feature performances by ten-time Grammy winner and legendary artist Bobby McFerrin, three-time Grammy awardee, and NPR Tiny Desk Contest winner Fantastic Negrito and the uplifting GLIDE Ensemble and Change Band, under the direction of Vernon Bush. Additionally, we will hear remarks from GLIDE President and CEO Karen Hanrahan, poet and GLIDE Memorial Church Minister of Celebration Marvin K. White, and more! As is tradition, the evening’s Mistress of Ceremonies will be Renel Brooks-Moon, the voice ​​​of San Francisco!

Each year, the GLIDE Annual Holiday Jam raises funds for GLIDE’s comprehensive services that provide opportunities to help more people off the streets and support policy reform and advocacy efforts to disrupt cycles of intergenerational poverty to realize a more equitable city.  GLIDE’s Annual Holiday Jam: Still We Rise is dedicated to GLIDE Co-Founder and Holiday Jam creator Janice Mirikitani who passed away recently.

Please note: Per current mandatory health requirements issued by the City and County of San Francisco, the GLIDE Holiday Jam: Still We Rise will require all attendees be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 (14 days past final vaccination shot) at the time of the event. Mask wearing is mandated by the City and County of San Francisco. The program will be available virtually for those who prefer to watch from home.

For decades Bobby McFerrin has broken all the rules. The 10-time Grammy winner has blurred the distinction between pop music and fine art, goofing around barefoot in the world’s finest concert halls, exploring uncharted vocal territory, inspiring a whole new generation of a cappella singers and the beatbox movement.

Considered a music-industry rebel who singlehandedly redefined the role of the human voice with his a cappella hit “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” McFerrin has collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma, Chick Corea, the Vienna Philharmonic, and more. His latest album “Circlesongs” with his improvising call-and-response 12-voice choir Voicestra was hailed as “music … touched with magic.” by The Washington Post. 

Photo: © Carol Friedman

When you listen to Fantastic Negrito, you’re invited to hear the story of life after destruction. Each song is a real story about a musician from Oakland who experienced the highs of a million-dollar record deal, the lows of a near fatal car accident that left him in a coma, and is now in the midst of a rebirth that took him from the streets of Oakland to the world stage.  

The narrative of this man is as important as the sound, because the narrative is the sound. Songs born from a long hard life channeled through black roots music. Slide guitar, drums, piano. Urgent, desperate, edgy.

Negrito burst onto the national radar by winning the inaugural NPR Tiny Desk contest in 2015, and has since won Grammys for all three of his albums: The Last Days of Oakland (2017), Please Don’t Be Dead (2019), and Have You Lost Your Mind Yet? (2021), which includes features from fellow Tiny Desk winner Tank (Tank and the Bangas) and Bay Area legend E-40. His latest singles are “Root City,” an anthem for the Oakland Roots Sports Club, and “Rolling Through California”, a rallying cry that calls for collective action in the wake of drought, accelerating climate change, and the growing calamity of California’s annual fire season. 

From its humble beginnings on Christmas Day, 1966, when it was only 10 singers and jazz legend John Handy, the GLIDE Ensemble and Change Band, under the direction of Vernon Bush, has grown to include more than 100 voices and eight musicians. Beginning with the first choir director, Faith Winthrop, the GLIDE Ensemble and Change Band has benefitted from the direction of such talented leaders as Donnell Hickman, Ronald Sutherland, John F. Turk, Jr., and Clifford Coulter. TheGLIDE Ensemble and Change Band have teamed up with a host of notable musicians, including Sammy Davis Jr., Leonard Bernstein, Marvin Gaye, Bono, Bobby McFerrin, Maya Angelou, and Joan Baez. 

Visit our GLIDE Annual Holiday Jam: Still We Rise website for more details!

2021 Holiday Jam Sponsors

EQUITY LEVEL

FREEDOM LEVEL

Erica and Jeff Lawson

ACCEPTANCE LEVEL

DIGNITY LEVEL

Kaye Foster, Jasmine and Jordan Cheek, Elizabeth Foster

Mary Glide and Chris Munoz

Susan E. Lowenberg and Joyce G. Newstat

JUSTICE LEVEL

Anonymous 

Nancy Milliken

FUTURE LEVEL

Kiki Goshay

Lauren Jamiolkowski and Greg Walder

Tracy and Jaison Layney

Nibbi Brothers General Contractors

Bill Nothman

Charles Schwab & Co., Inc.

Malcolm Walter

COMPASSION LEVEL

Anonymous

Armanino LLP

GLIDE Legacy Committee

Gurmehar Foundation 

Sarosi Kanter Charitable Foundation

Jeannine Kay and Michael Rugen

San Francisco Giants

Kelly and Jed Thompson

Lin-Hua Wu and Michael Fisher

Phil Zackler

RESPECT LEVEL

Ime Archibong and Lauren Baranco

EHC Content

Page and Turnbull Inc 

Audrey and Robert Sockolov

Elizabeth and James Steyer

Donald Tamaki and Suzanne Ahtye

Trabert Goldsmiths

PATRON LEVEL

Clanci Cochran John

Philip Coghlan and Tina Vindum

ENGEO Incorporated

Vickie Feldstein and Dennis Orwig

Mill Law Center

James and Margaret Shulman

Laura Thompson

Diane B. Wilsey

IN-KIND SPONSORS

If you would like to sponsor the GLIDE Annual Holiday Jam, please click here! The sponsor packet is available to review below. You can also contact Special Events Manager Holly Smith at festival@glide.org with any questions or to pay your sponsorship via Donor Advised Fund.

Download the sponsor packet here.