Or maybe you're looking for one of these (thanks, Google):
- tophill.net (Top Hill Telecom, Ft.Lauderdale FL)
- tophill.me (Nightclub Top Hill, Montenegro)
- tophillfarms.com (Xmas tree farm, Goodrich MI)
- tophillcabins.com (Vacation cabins, Cook Forest PA)
- saratogatophill.com (Motel, Saratoga Springs NY
- tophillind.com (Tophill Piao Cai Industries, Hong Kong)
- facebook.com/tophillmusic (Stuart Kenney, contradance musician, Greenfield MA)
- math.stonybrook.edu/~tony/ (mathematician, Stony Brook NY)
Czech Republic, 2002 TP & TJ
Failure To Disperse (predecessor of The Probabillies), Noe Valley Farmers Market, SF 2011
Bluegrass picnic with Pam Brandon and Larry Chung, China Camp, 2005
Sweets Mill, 2009
Taxi Driver, Santiago de Cuba, 2012
baseball player, RIP musician & engineer
I play mandolin, fiddle, guitar, and occasionally other musical instruments, with:
- Red Hot Chachkas klezmer band (1999-2015) Check out website, and CDs "Beats Without Borders" (2010), "Spice It Up!" (2007), and "Family Album" (2002). KlezmerShack says: "Tony Phillips on plucked strings is a standout, giving the sound a slight bluegrass tinge...."
- Probabillies Most often seen at Noe Valley Farmers Market in San Francisco, irregular Saturdays 11am-1pm about once a month.
- Crop Swappers Most often seen at Transition Berkeley's Crop Swap in Ohlone Park near the North Berkeley BART station on summer and fall Monday evenings at 6:30pm.
- Ngirchoureng Duo, Palau string-band songs with Jim Geselbracht
- Instant Klezmer, with Barbara Speed and me and whomever we recruit for a particular occasion
- Instant Klezmer Mandolin Orchestra (2005-...), which I formed and lead, performs occasionally at Jewish Music Festival and San Francisco Festival of the Mandolins,
- Jubilee American Dance Theatre (2000-...)
- Palma Soriano, Cuba (Dec. 2011)
- Festival de Gannat (Gannat, France, July 2008)
- Ramblin' Roads (Lesher Theatre, Walnut Creek, May 2006)
- Kaustinen Folk Music Festival (Kaustinen, Finland, July 2005)
- San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival (June 2000, 2001, 2005, 2009, 2011, 2016)
- Festival della Collina (Cori, Italy, July 2002; listen to "Mezzogiorno in Cori" )
- Mezinárodní Folklorní Festival (Klatovy, Czech Republic, July 2002)
- Festival Internacional del Folklore (Baja California, Mexico, Nov. 2000)
- Westwind International Folk Ensemble (1995-99) American and ethnic dance in the San Francisco Bay Area, including home shows at Cowell Theatre at Fort Mason and San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, plus on tour in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Fresno
- Contra Costa Civic Theatre production of "Foxfire,"fiddler (April-May 2008)
- Mandorian Candidates, a Mandolin/Octave Mandolin/Guitar/Bajo Sexto/Hammer Dulcimer/etc. trio with Olivier Zyngier and Jim Geselbracht, playing favorite tunes from as many nations as possible (active in the 1990s, reunion in 2016).
- Extinct and siteless bluegrass bands, including County Line, Gold Coast, Hayfever, and Wildcat On Toast, playing at places including the legendary Paul's Saloon in San Francisco:
Wildcat on Toast (Doug, David, TP, Lawrence, Joyce) at Paul's Saloon
my first band in the 1980s
Hayfever (Doug, TP, Holly, David, Lawrence)
Hayfever (clockwise: David, TP, Holly, Lawrence, Doug)
Gold Coast (Paul, TP, Jeanette, Glenn, Tony F) at Santa Cruz Bluegrass Society Festival
Some personal heros and mentors
- Prof. Kenneth Arrow
- Prof. John Rawls
- Hon. Ben. C. Duniway, U.S. Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit
- KlezCalifornia (Board Member) Yiddish language and culture, klezmer music and dance
- Jewish Music Festival (Steering Committee) (JMF ceased in 2015).
- San Francisco Festival of the Mandolins (Organizing Committee) an annual one-day event (on a Sunday in April)
Klezmer music: In hindsight, it seems inevitable that I'd be drawn into the klezmer revival, if only from proximity to some of the central people and influences.
- Read about the history of The Klezmorim, members of which I've often crossed paths
- A crucial step was attending KlezKamp West in 1998, which led directly to joining The Red Hot Chachkas
- Sources of information include: Klezmer Shack, Der Bay, and Geneva Klezmer Music
Music groups, venues, organizations, media, stuff i like, etc.:
- Freight & Salvage Coffee House in Berkeley is where I go most often, and where I lead a monthly oldtime jam
- Alan Bond's fine guide to Bay Area Bluegrass Bands, etc., including those he plays in such as Dark Hollow
- Peter Thompson's Bluegrass Signal show on KALW radio, 91.7 FM in San Francisco, on Saturdays from 6:30 to 8:00pm. Then stay tuned for Dory Stein's Tangents at 8pm.
- California Bluegrass Association / Calendar / Teacher list / Music Camp
- Old Time Music and Roots of American Fiddle Music
- Frets.com courtesy of repair-master Frank Ford of Gryphon Music in Palo Alto
- Archtop.com by Joe Vinikow of Seattle, who did an excellent tune-up on my guitar
- R & F Charle Lutherie if you want to see some nice instruments in Paris
- Mandolin Symposium
- Mandolin Magazine check out the magazine more than the website
- Fiddler Magazine ditto
- Co-mando.com
- California Coast Music Camp, in July
- Walker Creek Music Camp, in April and October
- Festival of American Fiddle Tunes Port Townsend, Washington, the week of July 4th.
- Kennaquhair for Doug Dieter's Universal String Tension Calculator
- Steve Ryder Stringed Instruments makes electric mandolins and custom-wound pickups
- JoyceJazz
- Dr. Klez
- Band name generator incredibly useful
- Mandolin links:
Time-wasting odds
and ends:
- At the South End Rowing Club annual Alcatraz-SF swim. I did it about five times, thanks to Dee Brown.
- Some other "cool" places to swim: Bristol Bay (Alaska), North Sea (Netherlands), Black Sea (Bulgaria), Helsinki Harbor & Gulf of Ostrobothnia (Finland)
- DHMO.org beware, water is dangerous stuff
- Street Name origins and history of San Francisco
- Hi! Monkey
- Poul Beckmann's beetle photos
- GernotKatzer's Spice Page
- Elena's Motorcyle Ride through Chernobyl
- Boring Postcards
- Places to visit?
- Yes No
- My favorite (though, ironically, carnivorous) plant: Darlingtonia californica
- Yiddish vocabulary
- How to write a Computer Science paper
- My Publications:
- "An Webedittting and Poofreading Hanbdook"
- "How Not To Procrastinate!" (forthcoming)
Family matters
- Irving
memoirs transcript
- Center for Medical Consumers, information and advocacy, New York
- Tom Phillips Woodworking in Ashland, Oregon
- 2017 Obit of John Nova Phillips
- Lt. Louis Friedberg (right), my mother's first cousin (my grandfather Irving's older sister Dorothy's son), served in W.W. II in the Fifteenth Air Force as a navigator on a B-24 bomber based in England, was shot down over Germany, and died in a POW camp at age 20 in 1944. Family lore has it that he participated in the famous raid on oil facilities in Ploiesti, Romania, Operation Tidal Wave.
- Another cousin Edwin Brown ((my grandfather Irving's younger sister Etta's son; see next photo), also served in the Air Force in England during the war. Louis' niece is Carla (far right in the same photo).
TP, Ed, Paula, Carla (SF ~ 1999)
Ken (1929-2007), TP, Tom, Lupin (Ashland, Feb. 2007)
Ed Brown's painting and excellent likeness of my brother Tom
Standing, L to R: Edwin Brown, Etta Brown, Clara Friedberg, Dorothy Levine Friedberg, Louis Friedberg, Mike Friedberg, Gussie Pfefferblum, Joe Levine
Seated: Sam Brown, Rose Friedberg, Carol Levin, Irving Levin, Ida Levine
Missing because too young to attend: Arnold Brown (10), Paula Levin (10), Arthur Levin (5)
Ken and John (NY ~ 1934) Florence Klotz (age 13, Brooklyn 1914)
Etta, Ida, Irving (Grodno, Russia ~1904) Abraham Pfefferblum (NY~1910)
Finally, a brief, yet telling, chronology:
