The Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, San Francisco’s most democratic, accessible and welcoming free cultural extravaganza, opens May 9 with a salsa dance party featuring the storied New York sonero Hermán Olivera, a Latin music institution for more than four decades.
Bringing Olivera to the Gardens was a longtime ambition of Marcelo Avilés, who started booking the festival in 2012 and played an essential role in turning it into one of region’s most welcoming and adventurous venues.
Running through Oct. 31 with music, theater, dance, circus arts and a panoply of cultural festivals, the entire YBGF season is dedicated to Avilés. The musician died unexpectedly in New York City on January 10 at the age of 42 while attending the APAP|NYC conference for performing arts curators.
A celebration of his life on Saturday afternoon, May 2, offered a glimpse at several of the artists performing later in the season, and an opportunity for some of the hundreds of performers he’s championed to pay tribute.
Born and raised in the Mission, Avilés was as widely known, loved and esteemed in the world of performing arts as he was anonymous to the audiences drawn to his programming, and that suited him just fine.
“Marcelo never wanted to put himself in the spotlight,” said Cristina Ibarra, who booked the festival with Avilés as YBGF managing director. “He always put the shine on the people around him. He was the ultimate hype man. He never wanted to be front and center.”
Watching Avilés at work, you’d never know he was the wizard behind the curtain. On show days, he could be found passing out surveys and golf pencils to audience members sprawled across the lawn, picking up trash, setting out chairs, moving a mic stand, or manning the merch booth.
More than unflappable, he exuded quiet elation when the lawn was packed, and seemed undiminished when the turnout was light.
Launched in 2000 by Mario Garcia Durham, the YBGF was originally under the umbrella of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, but soon spun off as in independent organization. It was already well established when Avilés became director of programming in 2012, using skills he’d honed booking Union Square.
His mother, Linda Lucero, had taken over from Durham as programming director in 2003, and for years many people didn’t realize they were related. It was a job that “he had a gift for,” Durham said.
“What that means is you have a real sense of space, knowing your audiences, understanding outdoor presentations, who you’re impacting and drawing in, and what’s really important to watch for,” he continued.
“It’s great when it all converges, and the way Marcelo programmed made it look easy, and it’s not easy. There are no tickets involved. You have no idea who’s going to show up.”
Among friends and colleagues Avilés was known for his indefatigable drive to check out new and unfamiliar artists. The festival keeps a document that anyone on staff can add to with a list of artists to try to present, which meant that Ibarra had a “good road map already started” to put together the 2026 season, she said.
“Everything really fell into place. I don’t think it’s ever been that easy, and that’s due to Marcelo.”
Among the acts he had been working on are son joracho combo Las Cafeteras (May 23), singer/songwriter Helado Negro (Aug. 15) and resurgent salsa great Joe Baatan (Oct. 17), “who we’ve had three out of the last four years,” Ibarra said. “Marcelo cold-messaged Joe on Facebook, pre-pandemic, before he’d really restarted his thing.”
East Bay-raised drummer Sameer Gupta was living in New York when he first connected with Avilés. As the co-founder of Brooklyn Raga Massive, he’d played a central role expanding the programmatic opportunities for classical Indian musicians, and Gupta found a ready and open-minded collaborator in Avilés.
“You can be heavy-handed as a programmer, like, there’s a vision you want to realize,” Gupta said. “I never felt that with Marcelo. It was always, let’s talk and make sure we understand each other. He was very aware of how artists work and a had great way of giving space to artists”
Avilés ended up presenting Brooklyn Raga Massive’s ambitious raga-infused production of Terry Riley’s “In C” with Classical Revolution in 2017, followed by a Native American/Indian collaboration with vocalist Martha Redbone’s Roots Project in 2019, and a celebration of Alice Coltrane featuring bass legend Reggie Workman in 2022.
Gupta returns to the Gardens on Aug. 2 with the second iteration of his Color Your Mind showcase, a project building on his track record of expanding the boundaries of classical Indian music and related traditions into new territory.
Looking at his upbringing, Avilés seems destined for a life in the arts.
It’s not just that his mother, Linda Lucero, was a graphic artist who became the director of La Raza Graphic Center when it was at the center of the Mission’s roiling arts and activism scene in the 1970s and ’80s. His father, Salvadoran-born Mauricio Avilés, was a concert producer and cultural activist deeply embedded in the Mission.
“He is a product of the Mission, which is so full of all kinds of artists, musicians, and poets,” said Lucero, who has turned her attention toward creative writing in recent years. “We were surrounded by people who were at the top of their skills. Everybody knew each other. It was a fountain of artistic creativity during that time.”
If you look closely, you can see the three-year-old Marcelo on a mural by the late artist Ray Patlán on Leonard R. Flynn Elementary School, “in a group of three kids, he’s the one with the green eyes,” Lucero said.
The youngest of three brothers, he attended Buena Vista Horace Mann Spanish Immersion Community School and the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts, where he made a core group of friends and focused theater tech and stage craft.
A regular at Columbia Park Boys’ Club, he learned to play pool, which became an abiding passion (along with cooking). He could be goofy and playful with friends and colleagues, and seemed to wear his leadership role effortlessly.
Ibarra recalled gleaning many lessons from him, including the ultimate responsibility that came with overseeing use of Yerba Buena Gardens.
Most of the time it was just his example, but he could articulate an important point when the moment was ripe. In her first year on the job in 2016 they were on a walk through together for big company looking to rent the Gardens for an event.
“I was trying to make everybody happy,” she recalled. “That was my MO, and he said something like, ‘Remember, the public is our most important client.’
He had so much integrity and never compromised that the public got this beautiful space back. He never back down from that.”
Also at the festival
The Yerba Buena Gardens Festival presents dozens of cultural offerings in the coming months. Here are four highly recommended.
1) Ricardo Lemvo & Makina Loca
Thursday, July 2, 6 p.m.
Returning to the Gardens after a long hiatus, Los Angeles-based Congolese-born vocalist Ricardo Lemvo puts a double dose of African soul into Afro-Cuban dance music.
2) Lady Wray
Saturday, July 11, 2 p.m.
A hitmaker when she recorded as Missy Elliott-produced Nicole Wray, Lady Wray wears her title with the regal presence of a gospel singer gone rogue on Saturday night. Oakland organ great Sundra Manning plays an opening set.
3) ChoreoFest
Saturday, July 25, 2 p.m.
No event makes better use of the Gardens’ various environments than ChoreoFest, a site-specific mini-festival that turns space into a partner.
Among the companies participating are Vanessa Sanchez & Mezcla, Ishami Dance Company, BrasArte, Yeni Lucero & Dancers, Sharp & Fine, and David Herrera Performance Company.
4) Brazil In the Gardens: Alexandre Ribeiro and Alessandro Penezzi
Thursday, Aug. 13, 12:30 p.m.
The annual contingent from Brazil Camp in Cazadero features clarinet maestro Alexandre Ribeiro and seven-string guitarist Alessandro Penezzi, composers who played a central role in the 1990s revival of choro.