From classical concerts to hit plays and immersive dance performances, there is a lot to see and hear in the Bay Area this weekend and beyond. Here’s a partial roundup.
Classical picks: MTT, Kohl Mansion concerts
Here are four programs classical music fans should know about.
MTT, McGegan return to podiums: Two great conductors — Michael Tilson Thomas and Nicholas McGegan, now both music directors laureate of their respective orchestras — are back in the Bay Area this month.
Tilson Thomas, San Francisco Symphony’s music director laureate, will conduct two programs at Davies Symphony Hall. The first features French cellist Gautier Capuçon, who joins Tilson Thomas and the orchestra in the U.S. premiere of Danny Elfman’s new Cello Concerto. The program also includes Stravinsky’s “Symphonies of Wind Instruments,” and Tchaikovsky’s “Serenade for Strings.”
In his second program, MTT welcomes the superb pianist Emanuel Ax as soloist in an all-Brahms program featuring the composer’s First Piano Concerto and Serenade No. 1.
McGegan, the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra’s longtime music director and now its conductor laureate, returns to the acclaimed early music ensemble with “The Surprises of Love,” an all-French program with works by Andre Campra, François Francoeur and Jean-Philippe Rameau.
San Francisco Symphony: Program One, 7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday; Program Two, 2 p.m. Nov. 17, 7:30 p.m. Nov. 18-19; Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco; $20-$170; www.sfsymphony.org.
Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra: Nov. 16-20 in Palo Alto, San Francisco and Berkeley; $32-$130; www.philharmonia.org.
A new work for a milestone: Music at Kohl Mansion celebrates its 40th anniversary this weekend with a special concert featuring the world premiere of “Hymn for Her” by Shinji Eshima. The program also features works by Mendelssohn, Ernst Bacon, and David Carlson. Jon Finck will interview Eshima before the performance.
Details: Pre-concert interview 6 p.m., concert 7 p.m.; Kohl Mansion, Burlingame; $25-$55; musicatkohl.org.
— Georgia Rowe, Correspondent
From Russia, with love
It seems like anything and everything can be adapted for a stage musical nowadays (“Gilligan’s Island”? “The Brady Bunch?” Yes on both counts). Then along comes a show like Dave Malloy’s “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812,” the origin of which staggers the imagination: Carve a 70-page chunk from Tolstoy’s 1,225-page novel “War & Peace” (an intimidating work that has possibly been fake-read more than any other piece of literature in history) and voila – there’s your musical. But given that this is a Russian novel we’re talking about, those 70 pages afforded Malloy more than enough love, heartbreak, scandal, philosophical musing, war and what-all to create a compelling sung-through electropop musical, which is what Malloy did, and wound up with a Broadway hit that garnered 12 Tony Award nominations in 2017.
Now the musical is getting its West Coast premiere by Berkeley’s Shotgun Players, in what amounts to a homecoming of sorts for Malloy, who used to live in the Bay Area and whose long history of working with Shotgun players dates back to 2005, when he was the music director of the company’s production of “Cabaret.”
Details: Through Jan. 15; Ashby Stage, Berkeley; $34-$70, with a pay-what-you-can performance set for 8 p.m. Nov. 11; show will be live-streamed Nov. 17 and Dec. 1 ($25); shotgunplayers.org.
— Bay Area News Foundation
The music of fishermen
A protégé of the legendary Ghanaian musician Obo Addy, Okaidja Afroso is a singer, dancer, guitarist and composer based in Portland, Oregon, since 1999. He’s developed a richly textured multimedia practice and his new production, “Jaku Mumor” (Ancestral Spirit), evokes life in Kokrobite, the small fishing town west of Accra, the Ghanaian capital where he grew up.
Weaving together the timeless sounds and rhythms of the sea with the ancestral rites and rituals of the Gãdangmé fishermen who make their living there, “Jaku Mumor” blends acoustic palm-wine guitar and fishermen’s songs with layered percussion and call-and-response vocals that could supply a pop band with an album’s worth of melodic hooks. Before his music career, Afroso spent five years studying traditional dance at the University of Ghana, an experience that shapes the songs he writes.
“I am a dancer first,” he told Afropop Worldwide. “So when I play music, I think like a dancer.”
Details: Presented by Stanford Live; 7:30 p.m. Friday; Bing Concert Hall, Stanford University; $15-$52; live.stanford.edu.
— Andrew Gilbert, Correspondent
‘Nutcracker’ season starts now
Like the stores that put up festive decorations the day after Halloween, Diablo Ballet is here to remind that the holiday season is indeed at hand, if you want it to be.
The Walnut Creek dance company, now in its 29h season, is traditionally one of the first out of the gate with its holiday performances. And true to form, the company is presenting Julia Adam’s 2019 adaptation of “The Nutcracker Suite” this weekend. Adam’s revised and slightly expanded adaptation of the iconic ballet centers on the Diablo family (get it, get it?) and daughter Clara and is set at San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel. The performance, set to Tchaikovsky’s classic score, also includes young students from the company’s ballet school.
A streaming version of the production will available Nov. 18-27.
Details: 7:30 p.m. Friday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday; holiday reception follows the Saturday matinee performance; Lesher Center for the Arts, Walnut Creek; $25-$52 live performance, $37 per household streaming version; 925-943-7469, diabloballet.org.
— Randy McMullen, Staff
Foggy choreography
It’s common for a painter, writer or composer to seek inspiration from a secluded, serene and scenic setting, probing its beauty, silence and solitude for insights into the human spirit or the world around us. Liss Fain did the same thing to develop a dance. The result was “Here. Take It,” a full-length, immersive installation work that gets its debut this weekend in San Francisco.
The work is the first since 2019 for Fain, a longtime choreographer who studied with Merce Cunningham and who is known for pieces that incorporate evocative settings and deal with our place in the world. For this piece, Fain made several trips to Pierce Point Ranch, a national park near the tip of Point Reyes, where she would arrive pre-dawn and watch the Bay Area’s resplendent fog give way to morning light. And it is this transformation that she is attempting to capture on stage – from the fog to the abandoned dairy farm buildings to the beckoning shoreline.
The work reportedly incorporates a free-standing barnlike structure that covers the stage, along with film and video clips, voiced-over text, a score by Dan Wool, six dancers and an actor. Fain says that during her exploratory trips to Pierce Point, she was seeking solace from dealing with a medical issue affecting a loved one. As she puts it, “There is something life-affirming in that place, watching the dark disappear.” The piece brings performers and audience members together on-stage, creating an atmosphere of intimacy and shared experience.
Details: 8 p.m. Nov. 11-12, 2 p.m. Nov. 13; Z Space performance center, 450 Florida St., San Francisco; $20-$45; www.zspace.org or https://www.lissfaindance.org.
— Bay Area News Foundation
