Bay Area arts: 9 great Bay Area shows and concerts to catch this week
From one of pop music’s biggest stars to an opera about Mount Everest and a music festival inspired by Leonard Cohen, there is a lot to see and do in the Bay Area this weekend.
Here is a partial roundup.
Carpenter brings Short N’ Sweet Tour to Chase
Sabrina Carpenter wasn’t supposed to play the 2024 Outside Lands Festival.
What turned into her headlining set originally belonged to Tyler, The Creator. But then the massive hip-hop star took himself off the lineup, calling Outside Lands “a commitment that (he) no longer could keep.”
Fortunately, Carpenter was willing to fill the void and ended up making her festival headlining debut at the three-day event in August at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. And she did a fantastic job, wowing a massive gathering of exuberant fans with a dizzying pop music spectacle that featured equal amounts of hits and star power.
That performance came just prior to the vocalist releasing her sixth full-length album, “Short n’ Sweet,” on Aug. 23, which has propelled the 25-year-old Pennsylvania native into the ranks of the top pop stars on the planet.
The album, featuring the multiplatinum No. 1 hits “Please Please Please” and “Espresso,” helps explain why the Short N’ Sweet Tour has turned into one of the year’s toughest tickets. Expect to see a very full house when Carpenter returns to San Francisco for a gig on Nov. 9 at Chase Center.
Details: 7 p.m.; tickets are $475 and up (through resale markets, subject to change); ticketmaster.com.
— Jim Harrington, Staff
Ice is nice for the holidays
The last time San Francisco had snow that stuck was 1976. So you can forget about making snowmen, unless you take the kids up into the mountains. But there is one perennial tradition that conjures winter wonderment just as well: ice skating in the city’s Union Square.
The 17th season of outdoor skating, which opened this week, runs through Jan. 20 at the Safeway Holiday Ice Rink in Union Square. It’s a fine opportunity to learn how to strap on skates and wobble like a newborn calf, then glide like a pro over the urban version of a frozen lake.
There are a number of events running concurrently with the skate rink, including Flashback Fridays with Classic Hits 103.7 radio station personalities playing hits from the 1980s; classical music on lazy Sunday mornings and a Black Friday dance party to burn off those Thanksgiving calories.
On Dec. 5, there will be a Drag on Ice show featuring some of the city’s top drag queens and kings dominating this icy runway. Then on Jan. 1, you can ring in the New Year — Canadian style — by showing up in your skimpiest beach attire for a Polar Bear Skate.
Details: 10 a.m.-11 p.m. daily through Jan. 20; 333 Post St., San Francisco; admission including skate rental is $20, $15 for kids under 8; unionsquareicerink.com
— John Metcalfe, Staff
Classical picks: Vivaldi, ‘Knoxville,’ a mountain of an opera
This week’s classical music attractions include the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra’s tribute to Vivaldi, a Berkeley Symphony concert featuring Barber and Bernstein, and another chance to see Opera Parallele’s immersive production of “Everest.”
“Vivaldi, Venice and the Four Seasons”: Join the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chorale in a celebration of Vivaldi’s music, with mandolin virtuoso Avi Avital leading a program of works by the heralded composer and some of his contemporaries. Expect traditional Venetian songs, and an appearance by soprano Estelí Gomez, who joins the ensemble in a performance of an aria from “L’Olimpiade.”
Details: 7:30 p.m. today at Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, 7:30 p.m. Friday at Bing Hall, Stanford University, 2:30 p.m. Saturday at First Congregational Church, Berkeley; $40-$132; philharmonia.org.
“Stories from Home”: The Berkeley Symphony opens its 2024 Symphonic Series with a program featuring soprano Lisa Delan as soloist in Samuel Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915.” Conducted by music director Joseph Young, the event also includes Bernstein’s “Symphonic Dances from West Side Story,” Silvestre Revueltas’ “Redes Suite,” and the Bay Area premiere of Kris Bowers’ “For a Younger Self,” with Grammy Award-winning violinist Charles Yang as soloist.
Details: 4 p.m. Sunday; Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley; $25-$85; berkeleysymphony.org.
To the top: For opera lovers who still haven’t seen Opera Parallele’s production of “Everest,” now’s a good time to head to the California Academy of Sciences. Based on a true story of astonishing courage and featuring performances by tenor Nathan Granner and mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, the 68-minute “graphic novel opera” by composer Joby Talbot and librettist Gene Scheer is breathtaking, and this showing in the Morrison Planetarium lends a fresh sense of drama to the opera’s already intensely immersive experience.
Details: Friday through Nov. 17; Morrison Planetarium, California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco; $35-$56; cityboxoffice.com.
— Georgia Rowe, Correspondent
SF throws a free party and you’re invited
As if San Francisco needed another reason to throw a party, here’s another one: Nov. 7 is a Thursday! And not just any old Thursday but the first Thursday of the month! Which means the city’s Downtown First Thursdays event is back to serve up a bunch of free fun from 5 to 10 p.m. on 2nd Street, between Howard and Market streets (and several adjoining alleyways). A handful of stages and dance halls will offer a variety of musical performers, including special guests Micah Mahinay, aka Noodles, a San Francisco-born Filipino American DJ, and Andre Power, a DJ and producer who specializes in showcasing music by up and coming artists. All told the event will feature more than a dozen DJs and musical acts, including the Mariachi Bonitas, an acclaimed all-female mariachi band that will perform 5 to 7 p.m. on 2nd Street. Also on the schedule are drag performers, a performance by dance troupe Theatre Flamenco, fashion displays and a variety of other entertainment, as well as two outdoor bars, and free entry into Minna Gallery and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Details: For more information, go to www.dftsf.com.
— Bay City News Foundation
Calling all Cohen fans
Leonard Cohen was an enigmatic and brilliant songwriter whose compositions enchanted not only a legion of fans but other songwriters as well. Bob Dylan revered him, and there is a reason why Cohen, who died in 2016, remains one of the more covered songwriters in history. With his probing, often wistful songs built on quiet, slow-building melodies and marvelous observations of love, life, sex, politics and pain, Cohen, created a musical catalog built on such classics as “Dance Me to the End of Love,” “I’m Your Man” and “Hallelujah.”
This weekend, Cohen’s music, poetry and spirit will be celebrated at the annual Leonard Cohen Festival, three days of readings and musical performances at the Swedish American Hall, 2174 Market St., in San Francisco. The event, running Friday through Sunday, is hosted and organized by the Conspiracy of Beards, a San Francisco men’s choir that specializes in performing Cohen’s music. The Beards will perform, as well as musical acts like Americana singer-songwriter Ruby Lee Hill and the band Ismay, and writers including San Francisco Poet Laureate Genny Lim.
Details: Performances start at 7:30 p.m. each day; $34.43-$44.73; www.sfleonardcohenfest.com.
— Bay City News Foundation
Rising comedian comes to Stanford, Sonoma
He makes a point of not disclosing his age, but there is a youthful look and demeanor to comedian Mike E. Winfield that suits him well on stage. This includes when he talks about his youth spent in a tough neighborhood in Baltimore, and recalls once finding a gun underneath his mother’s pillow (“I couldn’t wait for my teeth to fall out,” he cracks) or his uneasy indoctrination into parenthood when he married a much-older woman with a son who’s roughly the same age as him. His relatable, gleefully delivered autobiographical humor made Winfield a hit on TV’s “America’s Got Talent,” where he was a finalist, and is fueling his fast-rising career as a standup comedian with two recorded comedy specials, a host of late-night appearances and an Emmy nomination to his credit. Winfield is coming to the Bay Area this week for performances at two venues.
Details: 7:30 p.m. Friday at Sebastiani Theatre in Sonoma ($25; events.sebastianitheatre.com); 7 and 9 p.m. Saturday at Stanford University’s The Studio, presented by Stanford Live ($15-$50; live.stanford.edu)
— Bay City News Foundation
A season kickoff
Music director Joseph Young and the Berkeley Symphony launch the orchestra’s 2024-25 season at 4 p.m. Sunday in Zellerbach Hall on the UC Berkeley campus with a program called “Stories From Home.” Appropriately enough, the pieces are indeed homegrown North American, beginning with Samuel Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915,” composed in 1947 for orchestra and voice, based on a short prose piece by James Agee. Soprano Lisa Dean, an acknowledged interpreter of American art song, is the featured soloist. Also on the program is the Bay Area premiere of “For a Younger Self,” a concerto by the Academy Award-winning composer Kris Bowers that will put the Grammy-winning violinist Charles Yang in the spotlight. Leonard Bernstein’s jazz-inflected “Symphonic Dances from West Side Story” and the “Redes Suite” from Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas, taken from his score for the movie, complete the concert.
Details: Tickets, $25-$85, available at www.berkeleysymphony.org.
— Bay City News Foundation