providing fresh and affordable to year-round. this is a great resource that does not break the bank. to show just how easy it can be to do just that, we have come up with something called the farmers' market challenge. we find someone who loves to cook, give them $20, and challenge them to create a delicious meal from ingredients found right here in the farmer's market. who did we find for today's challenge? >> today with regard to made a pot greater thanchapino. >> you only have $20 to spend. >> i know peter it is going to be tough, but i think i can do it. it is a san francisco classic. we are celebrating bay area food. we have nice beautiful plum

tomatoes here. we have some beautiful fresh fish here. it will come together beautifully. >> many to cut out all this talk, and let's go shop. yeah. ♪ >> what makes your dish unique? >> i like it spicy and smoky. i will take fresh italian tomatoes and the fresh seafood, and will bring them to other with some nice spoked paprika and some nice smoked jalapeno peppers. i am going to stew them up and get a nice savory, smoky, fishy, tomatoy, spicy broth. >> bring it on. how are you feeling? >> i feel good. i spent the $20 and have a few

pennies less. i am going to go home and cook. i will text message u.n. is done. >> excellent and really looking forward to it. >> today we're going to make the san francisco classic dish invented by italian and portuguese fishermen. it'll be like a nice spaghetti sauce. then we will put in the fish soup. the last thing is the dungeon as crab, let it all blend together. it will be delicious. when i could, i will try to make healthy meals with fresh ingredients, whatever is in season and local. those juicy, fresh tomatoes will take about an hour to cook down into a nice sauce. this is a good time to make our fish stock. we will take a step that seems like trash and boil it up in water and make a delicious and they speed up my parents were great clerics, and we had wonderful food. family dinners are very important. any chance you can sit down together and have a meal together, it is great communal

atmosphere. one of the things i like the most is the opportunity to be creative. hello. anybody with sets their mind to it can cut. always nice to start chopping some vegetables and x and the delicious. all this double in view is this broth with great flavor. but your heart into it. make something that you, family, and friends will really enjoy. >> i am here with a manager at the heart of the city farmer's market in san francisco. thank you for joining us. tell us a little bit about the organization. >> we're 30 years old now. we started with 14 farmers, and it has grown out to over 80. >> what is the mission of the organization? >> this area has no grocery store spiller it is all mom-and- pop stores. we have this because it is needed. we knew it was needed. and the plaza needed somebody.

it was empty. beautiful with city hall in the background. >> thank you for speaking with us. are you on the web? >> yes, hocfarmersmarket.org. >> check them out. thank you. >> welcome. the dish is ready. >> it looks and smells amazing. >> thank you. it was not easy to meet the $20 budget. i checked everybody out and found some great produce. really lovely seafood. i think that you are going to love it. >> do not be shy. cyou know this can run you $35 to $45 for a bowl, so it is great you did this for $20. >> this will feed four to six people. >> not if you invite me over for dinner. i am ready to dig in. >> i hope you'll love it.

>> mmm. >> what do you think? >> i think i am going to need more. perhaps you can have all you want. >> i am produce the that you have crushed this farmer's market challenge by a landslide. the first, we're going to have to tally of your shopping list and see what you actually spend that the farmer's market. >> and go for it. >> incredible. you have shown us how to make super healthy, refresh chapino from the farmers market on the budget, that for the whole family. that is outstanding. >> thank you peter i am glad that you like it. i think anybody can do it. >> if you like the recipe for this dish, you can e-mail us at sfgtv@sfgov.org or reach out to

us on facebook or twitter and we i'm the president of friends of mclaren park. it is one of the oldest neighborhood community park groups in san francisco. i give a lot of tours through the park. during those tours, a lot of the folks in the group will think of the park as very scary. it has a lot of hills, there's

a lot of dense groves. once you get towards the center of the park you really lose your orientation. you are very much in a remote area. there are a lot of trees that shield your view from the urban setting. you would simply see different groves that gives you a sense of freedom, of being outdoors, not being burdened by the worries of city life. john mclaren had said that golden gate park was too far away. he proposed that we have a park in the south end of the city. the campaign slogan was, people need this open space. one of the things that had to open is there were a lot of people who did a homestead here, about 25 different families. their property had to be bought up. so it took from 1928 to 1957 to buy up all the parcels of land that ended up in this 317 acres. the park, as a general rule, is

heavily used in the mornings and the evenings. one of the favorite places is up by the upper reservoir because dogs get to go swim. it's extremely popular. many fights in the city, as you know, about dogs in parks. we have 317 acres and god knows there's plenty of room for both of us. man and his best friend. early in the morning people before they go to work will walk their dogs or go on a jog themselves with their dogs. joggers love the park, there's 7 miles of hiking trails and there's off trail paths that hikers can take. all the recreational areas are heavily used on weekends. we have the group picnic area which should accommodate 200 people, tennis courts are full. it also has 3 playground areas.

the ampitheater was built in 1972. it was the home of the first blues festival. given the fact that jerry garcia used to play in this park, he was from this neighborhood, everybody knows his reputation. we thought what a great thing it would be to have an ampitheater named after jerry garcia. that is a name that has panache. it brings people from all over the bay area to the ampitheater. the calls that come in, we'd like to do a concert at the jerry garcia ampitheater and we do everything we can to accommodate them and help them because it gets people into the park. people like a lot of color and that's what they call a park. other people don't. you have to try to reconcile all those different points of view. what should a park look like and what should it have? should it be manicured, should

it be nice little cobblestones around all of the paths and like that. the biggest objective of course is getting people into the park to appreciate open space. whatever that's going to take to make them happy, to get them there, that's the main goal. if it takes a planter with flowers and stuff like that, fine. you know, so what? people need to get away from that urban rush and noise and this is a perfect place to do it. feedback is always amazement. they don't believe that it's in san francisco. we have visitors who will say, i never knew this was here and i'm a native san franciscoan. they wonder how long it's been here. when i tell them next year we'll get to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the park,k,

[applause] >> good evening. welcome to the meeting of the commonwealth club and forum, connect your intellect. you can find us online. you can follow the best of our conversations on twitter. i am the author of the "this is your brain on music. " i am a professor of psychology and behavioral neuroscience. i am delighted to introduce you to my friend, one of my famous -- favorite guitarists and musicians. he discovered the guitar at a young age.

he has played at notable vilnius such as the -- notable venues such as montrose and carnegie hall. >> i would like to start by saying that in the last 15 or 20 years of my research, one thing i found most surprising as a musician myself in exploring music and the brain is how -- discovering where it is that music is. i always imagined as a player that the music was in my fingers. now i know is in the brain. it is a neuro-representation of the figures. music is in every part of the brain that we have mapped. there is no part of the brain that does not have something to do with music. i found that very surprising. i wondered if you find that

surprising as a player and what your own intuitions were coming into it. >> i think my intuition is that music is something that gets received in some sense or another, like radio, like something you pick up. it is a vibration. when i have written my own music for the guitar, a lot of times it is the result of having experienced something and having to absorb it like you might absorb a vibration or light our experience something rhythmic like walking down the street. >> a lot of composers say they feel like they are not really creating the music. they're channeling it. roseanne cash talks about holding up her catcher's mitt

and catching one as it goes by. someone else talks about how the music is everywhere for anyone to take, that you just have to tune into it. >> driving down here today, there was a rough patch of road because there was construction. you are feeling the road. it makes you aware that no matter where you are or what you are doing, you could be some ki, and you hear something may be rise out of that rhythm. for me, personally, a lot of times the idea for writing a piece of music or making arrangement comes from some sort of rhythm. a lot of people would say, do you get the melody first or the rhythm? i always say i get the rhythm first and the melody comes out of it. >> could you play us an example of may be something where the rhythm came first? and maybe just play the rhythm.

>> i will try. this is a piece called "cumulus rising." this is from a piece that i did in 1998, on the theme of water. this is sort of the theme of water rising through a team less clout. it does not have to be, but that is the sensation that gave me the idea. -- cumulus cloud. >> if you could play the rhythm first. >> i will tap it. [tapping] pretty simple. then i will play a little bit of it.

♪ >> i will leave it there.

[applause] >> one of the things that people often ask is what is happening in our brains when we hear a piece of music. it is extraordinarily complicated. a sound enters the years and there is a cascade of their rick complicated processes that turn the changes in air pressure to an electrical signal which gets transmitted from the year to the brain. once it hits the brain, it gets even more complicated. it turns out there are distinct regions of the brain that process different aspects of the sound. one part of the brain, you can think of it as a special purpose circuit, attending to and processing their read them. then there is a separate part processing the pitch, a separate part combining the pitches and duration into melodies, a part

separate from that attending to how loud or soft it is, and it all comes together later and get this seamless impression of this beautiful melody and harmony, yet, it is processed piecemeal. one of the sources of information of this is we have patients who are damaged in one focal portion of the brain and they lose one of those elements while retaining the others. they may lose rhythm or they will have to pitch and harmony. >> is it processed in real time? simultaneously? >> yes, but quickly. when i say later, later in brain time means maybe 1/30 of a second later. any second, it can be disrupted , and you to organic brain injury or trauma, it can be disrupted.

it is remarkable. the player, at some level, perhaps unconsciously, are having to think about the elements unconsciously. >> i teach a lot of workshops and a lot of people come to play our master classes, they come with their own performance, arrangement. they are looking for feedback. one of the things that i always say, because, as a musician, we try to get everything at once. all of the elements. we tried to simultaneously get the rhythm, melody, the subtleties, dynamics, accent, all those things that make music interesting. but a lot of times, it is good practice to tear them apart. solo guitar playing, for example, polyphonic music, you have a melody and a baseline,

maybe an accompaniment, 3rd voice or harmonic accompaniment. i always suggest people to tear them apart, work on the melody, just work on the base, rhythm, accompaniment. that provides an important process to understanding how these elements have to happen simultaneously. >> when you are writing, as a fan of yours, for decades now -- i think your first record came out in the 1970's. >> 1978. >> that is right. as a fan, one of the things that struck me is you did not sound like anyone else i had heard, and you still do not. when i listen to any other guitarist,, composer, you can hear their influence, who they

took this idea or technique from. your music just sounds fresh and novel. i wonder if you might be willing to disclose to us some of your influences and how they gave rise to your compositional playing style, and maybe demonstrate them. >> i like to joke, i did not learn how to play anything else really well, so i had to come up with my own. it is true, i found this out later when i was teaching. can you show me that solo to that song? do you know how it goes? i am useless at that. i am not very good at cataloging other people's music. i certainly had my influence is growing up. i started playing the guitar when i was 12th. i was a big fan of the pope,

blue, british isles scene, mississippi john hurt me, sonny terry brown mcgee, i played some blues harmonica. >> did you learn that open tuning style, slide style? >> i have not picked up a slide in a long time, so i do not want to embarrass myself, but yes. it was a lot of folk music, blues and early on. i fell in love with the sound of the steel string guitar. there are a lot of idiomatic thing that it does well. i studied classic guitar a bit, but the steel string, for example, we do something called a hammer on and pull off, which is -- >> you get three note for the

price of one. >> you plug the string but you get four notes. i always think of that town at the the prototypical steel string guitar sound. british isles, a caltech music. i learned all the paul simon songs. as i got older -- >> he is a hell of a guitarist. people do not realize. he is not flashy, but if you try to learn his tunes, they are really hard. >> he is a brilliant guitar player. i eventually got interested in jazz, world music, everything. maybe that is one of the reasons. i enjoyed so many kinds of music, i did not have a preference. i did not want to be anything in particular. i just wanted to play guitar and

get that sound that i was hearing in my head. >> is there a particular song of yours that you can trace back to and influence, sound that you were trying to get that you heard somebody else use and you wanted to use it? >> i will play you a few bars from a piece that i wrote in the 1970's, very much influenced by the british isles style. this one is called "inverness." ♪ >> i am cutting it short, but, to me, that is the quintessential british isles style.

>> although, in your hand, it is more harmonically complex. >> it could be. >> one of the things i was trying to do -- i became a big fan of keith jarrett when i was young. i thought, wow, if i can do something like that with a guitar -- and i remember, i was a student at uc-berkeley, considering going to graduate school in economic geography and working as an intern coming here at the san francisco planning department. i was also a record in my first album. i wrote this piece called " turning, turning back." it began the recording but it also began a new direction for me. they say every musician that starts recording for writing, arranging music, they have to find their own voice.

i think i may be found my own voice in that one. >> are you going to play some of it? ♪ >> just playing an excerpt from the middle, -- time part. -- double-time part. the main theme -- ♪

[applause] >> that is the main theme. >> often, when i listen to guitar players, because i'm a guitarist myself, i'm trying to figure out what they are doing and how they do it. i cannot do that when i listen to you. the music for " washes over me. for me, it is so immediately engaging and hypnotize him. to be fair, the other part of it is, in 1000 years, i could never do that. there is a technical component to would you do, and i am reminded, one of your albums was reviewed by "coo guitar plar magazine."

i am prepared praising he said something to the effect of, listening to alex thrusts fellow pickers to the brink of decision. do i give up everything else in my life and practice like a madman or throw my guitar down the chasm? >> that became a staple in my press packed with back then. today, to be honest, there are a lot of talented young players out there. the whole scene has developed so much, the technique has really moved forward a lot. >> and each generation can learn from the previous. leo cocky learn from fahey. each new generation has these new musicians to slow down and learn a note by note. on the technical side, when you on the technical side, when you write, maybe do not want to give