Bay Area arts: 8 cool live shows to see this weekend and beyond
From an international dance festival to a tap-dancing superstar, there are a lot of great shows to see in he Bay Area.
There are a lot of great shows to see in the Bay Area this week and beyond, from an international dance festival to West Edge Opera and one of America’s most cherished songwriters.
Here’s a partial rundown.
Dances from around the world
It’s called the Peninsula International Dance Festival and they’re not kidding about the international part.
The two-day event this weekend will feature more than 200 performers from more than 20 Bay Area companies serving up traditional and contemporary dances representing Bolivia, Brazil, Cambodia, China, Congo, Greece, Hawaii, India, Mexico, Native America, Peru, Philippines, Spain, and more.
The music and dance festival debuted last year and was enough of a success to return this year with two full days of performances produced by Christine Leslie, executive director of Peninsula Ballet Theatre (PBT), the Bay Area’s second
oldest ballet and dance company.
Reflecting the jaw-dropping depth of the Bay Area dance scene, the festival will drawn from a wide range of Bay Area troupes, including Amor do Samba (Brazil); Antara Asthaayi Dance (India); Azteca Dancers/Calpulli Tonalehqueh (Mexico); Bolivia Corazón de América (Bolivia); Charya Burt Cambodian Dance (Cambodia); Chitresh Das Institute/Youth Company (India); Eddie Madril/Sewam (Native American); Feng Ye Dance (China); and many, many more.
The event comes to the San Mateo Performing Arts Center this weekend.
Details: 7 p.m. Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday; 600 N. Delaware St., San Mateo; $35-$60; www.peninsulaballet.org.
— Randy McMullen, Staff
Jimmy Webb is still spinning songs
On the penultimate date of what’s being touted as his first formal West Coast tour, 76-year-old tunesmith Jimmy Webb brings his treasure trove of songs to Berkeley this weekend.
He’s best known as a composer with an improbably iconic catalog that includes “Wichita Lineman,” “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” “MacArthur Park,” “Galveston,” “Didn’t We,” and many others. But Webb is also a pianist, singer, arranger and producer, and his show explores the way his songs have reflected his life and experiences living in Los Angeles as Tinsel Town’s star-making machinery lurched from the 1960s to the ‘70s.
He wrote most of his hits when he was living in L.A., and the SoCal theme sweeps up songs like “Rosecrans Boulevard” and “All I Know,” Art Garfunkel’s first hit as a solo artist.
The multi-Grammy Award winner, named by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the 50 greatest songwriters of all time, is bringing his priceless catalogue to Freight & Salvage on Saturday.
Details: 8 p.m.; 2020 Addison St., Berkeley; $40-$44; thefreight.org.
— Andrew Gilbert, Correspondent
Summer thrills at West Edge Opera
Throughout his tenure as general director of West Edge Opera, Mark Streshinsky has made his summer seasons a must for adventurous opera lovers. This month, the company returns to Oakland’s Scottish Rite Center with three full productions — and a tantalizing first look at a new opera.
Launching the season is “L’Incoronazione di Poppea” (The Coronation of Poppea), Monteverdi’s last and finest opera, conducted by Adam Pearl and starring soprano Shawnette Sulker in the title role, with Sarah Coit as Nero, Michael Skarke as Ottone, and Sara Coudon as Octavia.
Also on the calendar: the Bay Area debut of “Cruzar La Cara de la Luna” (To Cross the Face of the Moon), a contemporary “Mariachi opera” by José “Pepe” Martinez and Leonard Foglia, conducted by Sixto Montesinos and starring baritone Efrain Solis. Rounding out the mainstage season is a double bill, conducted by Jonathan Khuner, of Stravinsky’s “Le Rossignol” (The Nightingale), featuring soprano Helen Zhibing Huang, and Schoenberg’s “Erwartung” (Expectation), with soprano Mary Evelyn Hangley as The Woman. And don’t miss the company’s Aug. 13 concert preview of “Dolores,” a West Edge commission composed by Nicolás Lell Benavides and Marella Martin Koch, conducted by Mary Chun with mezzo-soprano Kelly Guerra singing the title role of celebrated labor leader Dolores Huerta.
Details: Season runs July 22-Aug. 14; Scottish Rite Center, 1547 Lakeside Drive, Oakland; $10-$150; westedgeopera.org.
— Georgia Rowe, Correspondent
Fun free tunes in Richmond
One of the Bay Area’s best free concert series is back this week for what should be a lovely balmy evening that will feel like a summer celebration. Point Richmond Music’s Summer Concert Series runs the second Friday of each month from June through September (with an extra show added on September’s final Friday, just for good measure). The music plays from 5:30 to 7:45 p.m., featuring two bands. The shows take place at Park Place and Washington Avenue in a communal atmosphere, with lots of restaurants and other businesses open in case you develop a thirst or an appetite; works by local artists on display and face-painting available for the kids; and dancing on the street heartily encouraged. Also, the organizers put a lot of work into selecting bands and musical artists for each season, resulting in fun, high-quality performances. On Friday, the lineup includes Blu Egyptian (starting at 5:30), a quartet out of Chico with a knack for tight, high-energy shows (they are said to perform at least one concert pretty much every week) blending genres ranging from funk to bluegrass to reggae to EDM. Blu Egyptian will give way to Barrio Manouche, the popular, very danceable eight-piece Bay Area band fronted by talented guitarist Javi Jiménez. The band’s sound is described as a percolating mix of flamenco, jazz manouche (aka gypsy jazz), Brazilian and Latin jazz, roots music and more. Point Richmond Music organizers keep busy year-round, staging an acoustic music series and a jazz series that run October through June at the First United Methodist Church.
Details: More information is available at pointrichmondmusic.org.
— Bay City News Foundation
Titan of tap lands in SF
For all those who think tap dancing is primarily an adrenaline-filled burst of showy athleticism swimming in a sea of clackety-clacks, Savion Glover is here to remind us that it is a true art form, capable of addressing various themes and stoking a variety of emotions. He’ll prove that again this weekend, performing two very different shows during a short stint Thursday through Sunday at the SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco. On the first two nights, Glover will perform a show titled ““SoUNDz’ SaCRoSaNcT,” which is described as a heartfelt tribute to his teacher, mentor and longtime friend, the legendary late performer Gregory Hines. The show will also shine a light on the 1920s and 30s dancers who pioneered tap. On Saturday and Sunday, Glover pivots to a program devoted to the music, art and cosmic eclecticism that was Sun Ra. Born Herman Poole Blount, the bandleader, composer and keyboardist arose from the Chicago jazz seen in the 1940s, adopting the name Sun Ra and proclaiming himself a traveler from outer space who’d come to Earth to preach peace. He was also a groundbreaking figure in the advent of experimental and improvisational jazz as well as Afrofuturism. Glover’s show, as organizers put it, will incorporate a “meditative sound and dance intended to take the audience on an interstellar journey into Sun Ra’s heliocentric worlds.”
Details: 7:30 p.m. July 13-15, 7 p.m. July 16; (July 14 performance will also be available for live-streaming by SFJAZZ members); $25-$110; www.sfjazz.org.
— Bay City News Foundation
Desperate diva at Pocket Opera
Floria Tosca, both proud and jealous and the most famous soprano in all of Italy, gets caught up in political skulduggery and murder when she struggles to rescue her beloved Mario from the deathly clutches of Baron Scarpia, who can lay clear claim being to one of the most dastardly villains in all of operadom. That quick and nimble little company, San Francisco’s Pocket Opera, brings its version of the Puccini masterpiece “Tosca” to Bay Area stages for three performances, beginning with Sunday’s 2:30 p.m. show at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. Soprano Michelle Drever sings the title role, and tenor Alex Boyer is Maria Cavaradossi. Baritone Spencer Dodd dons his bad boy suit to channel that lecherous snake Scarpia.
Details: $30 for those 30 and under if purchased by phone at 415-972-8934, other tickets $69-$75; repeat performances are at 2 p.m. July 23 at the Berkeley Hillside Club and 2 p.m. July 30 at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco; pocketopera.org.
— Bay City News Foundation
Change of plans at Steinway Society
He was supposed to be here with us in person, but visa problems have switched Russian-born pianist Rustem Hayroudinoff’s appearance here in the Bay Area to a virtual one that will give patrons online streaming access for a full 10 days.
Sponsored by the Steinway Society, Hayroudinoff, a highly praised and widely recorded professor of piano at the Royal Academy of Music in London (where he was once the first Russian student to be admitted), has been called “a player in the great Russian virtuoso tradition” by Gramophone magazine.
His program consists of works by great giants of the piano: C.P.E. Bach’s Sonata in F-sharp minor, J.C. Bach’s Sonata in A Major, Chopin’s Andante Spiniato and the Grande Polonaise Brillante, the Etude No 1. in C minor from Rachmaninoff’s Nine Etudes-Tableaux plus four of the same composer’s Op. 23 preludes.
Details: Available for streaming through midnight July 16; $20 per household; steinwaysociety.com.
— Bay City News Foundation