From a world-renowned men’s chorus to historic Muni rides and Alonzo King’s evocative choreography, there is a lot to see and hear in the Bay Area this weekend and beyond. Here’s a partial rundown.
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Classical picks: Chanticleer; Gaffigan at SFS
Fall’s classical music scene brings a fantastic array of choices, including vocal works, piano dazzlers, and timeless operas. Here are three standouts in a wide range of attractions music lovers won’t want to miss.
Chanticleer: With an impressive repertoire spanning early music to contemporary, Chanticleer starts its 48th Bay Area season this month. The 12-man vocal ensemble has a range of music in store, including a new commission by composer Trevor Weston, whose music has been described as “a gently syncopated marriage of intellect and feeling.” The new program also includes Chanticleer vocal arrangements of gospel, barbershop quartets, vocal jazz, bluegrass tunes, and American classics including Irving Berlin’s “Blue Skies.”
Details: Experience the group’s season-opening concerts in Berkeley, Sacramento, Mill Valley, Santa Clara, and San Francisco; Sept. 20-28; tickets $40-$71; chanticleer.org.
Gaffigan to San Francisco Symphony: Conductor James Gaffigan arrives at Davies Symphony Hall this week to conduct music by George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, and Carlos Simon. Of special interest: pianist Hélène Grimaud joins the orchestra in Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F. Come early for a free pre-concert talk at 6:30 p.m. by UC Berkeley’s David H. Miller.
Details: 7:30 p.m. Sept. 18-20; $30-$185; sfsymphony.org.
Last Chances for “Rigoletto”: Opera lovers still have the opportunity to experience San Francisco Opera’s season-opening production of “Rigoletto.” Verdi’s masterwork continues into next week, directed by Jose Maria Condemi, conducted by Eun Sun Kim, and featuring top-flight singers including Amartuvshin Enkhbat in the title role.
Details: Performances through Sept. 27; tickets start at $29; sffopera.com.
— Georgia Rowe, Correspondent
Fun with mass transit
Getting a free ride on public transit is pretty cool. Getting a free ride on a 1934 Blackpool Boat Tram – a British-designed streetcar that looks like a pleasure ship, complete with illuminated masts and “Jolly Roger” flags — now that is something truly special.
In an annual tradition that pleases folks of all ages, the Muni Heritage Weekend is back with a weekend full of transportation-loaded fun. Centered around the San Francisco Railway Museum, the bash features free rides on a number of historical vehicles from Muni’s barns. There’s Car 1, the first publicly owned streetcar in America, for instance, and a single-truck “Dinky” tram from 1896 (commuters rode these in the early days of Alameda Island).
A cable car that started life on Market Street in the 1880s will run on the scenic California Street line. Beyond trams, there are buses galore: a 1990 Orion 30-foot model giving rides to the Giants’ Oracle ballpark, and there’s a classic Mack bus from the 1950s and a teeny 87-year old White Motor Co. bus that chugged up to Coit Tower for nearly four decades. At the museum itself, visitors can sort through an epic amount of transit-and-railroad books and memorabilia. Note: While it’s free fare on vintage vehicles, the regular Muni system is still pay-to-ride.
Details: Event takes place 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sept. 20-21 at the San Francisco Railway Museum, 77 Steuart St., San Francisco; streetcar.org
— John Metcalfe, Staff
LINES Ballet revives a classic
At a time when it seems we are awash in news that is either sad or scary (or both), Alonzo King is here to remind us of what is truly important in life – love and spirituality. If you don’t know the name, King is not a self-help guru (though he might just be pretty good at that), he is one of the Bay Area’s most acclaimed contemporary dance choreographers. And part of the greatness in his work is that it is always about something. Even the basic elements of choreography itself are, to King, part of a bigger picture. He refers to his works as “thought structures,” tied to universal forces of motion. This weekend, King and his company, LINES Ballet, return to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to perform his acclaimed 2023 evening-length work “Deep River,” which has drawn rave reviews around the world. The work, which King has described as a meditation on love, resilience and inner-strength, is set to Black spirituals and Jewish liturgical music, features vocals by the great singer Lisa Fischer and a score by piano great Jason Moran, artists with whom the collab-happy King has worked before.
Details: Performances are 7:30 p.m. Sept. 18-19, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sept. 20 and 2 p.m. Sept. 21 in the YBCA’s Blue Shield Theatre. King will be on hand for a post-performance Q&A on Sept. 19. Tickets are $42-$135; linesballet.org or ybca.org.
— Bay City News Foundation
An atmospheric musical
Anyone who was in the Bay Area on Sept. 9, 2020, knows exactly what the title to the world-premiere musical “The Day the Sky Turned Orange” is about. Residents awoke to an atmospheric anomaly — fueled by meteorological conditions trapping smoke from Northern California wildfires — in which the sky did indeed turn a smoky orange. It created a surreal atmosphere and made more than a few folks fear that maybe, just maybe, California’s fragile and temperamental ecosystem had had enough with us human types.
It was a strange and unsettling time, and now there is a musical about it. Created by Julius Ernesto Rea and featuring songs and music by Olivia Kuper Harris and David Michael Ott, “Orange” has opened at Z Space performance center in San Francisco.
The world-premiere musical, a collaboration between San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Company (SFBATCO) and Z Space, is probably not what you’d expect. Organizers say it is more of a thoughtful and philosophical look at a strange and transformative time than a doom-and-gloom eco-disaster parable. And the score is fueled by lively R&B- and gospel-fueled tunes. SFBATCO co-founder Rodney Earl Jackson Jr. directs.
Details: Through Oct. 5; Z Space, 450 Florida St., San Francisco; $25-$69; www.sfbatco.org.
— Randy McMullen, Staff
Freebie of the week
As part of sponsoring organization Arts4All’s commitment to making a diverse array of concerts by proven performers highly accessible, Berkeley-based pianist Sarah Cahill brings her nature-themed program “The Woods So Wild” to Tateuchi Hall at the Community School of Music and Arts in Mountain View at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 19.
Her program title is taken directly from the work of famed English Renaissance composer William Byrd, who built a set of 14 variations around a simple rustic theme based on a Tudor song. Also on the program is Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s five-movement “Forest Scenes,” with each movement portraying a different chapter in a romantic encounter between a maiden and a phantom. A couple of Cahill’s choices are works she has recorded on her albums, including Leo Ornstein’s “Morning in the Woods,” full of the rustling, scurrying and breeze-born sounds one might hear on a nature walk. Compositions by Amy Beach, Mamoru Fujieda, Erkki Melartin and Leokadiya Kashperova round out the program, which takes place at 230 San Antonio Circle in Mountain view and is free.
Details: More information is at arts4all.org/concerts.
— Bay City News Foundation
A well-traveled trombonist
You have two chances to catch Buzz Lightyear’s favorite jazz cat this weekend in the East Bay. Well, OK, we don’t know for certain that trombonist Bob Roden is Buzz Lightyear’s favorite jazz musician (rumor has Buzz is more of a metalcore fan, anyway) but the very fact that he could be speaks to Roden’s extensive and many-varied career, in addition to being the leader of a talented quintet. His musical career began when he was a 20-year-old rock ‘n’ roller touring Holiday Inns on the way to working his way up to some of the top showrooms on the Vegas strip. Along the way, he struck up a long and fruitful working relationship with Vegas icons Sidro’s Armada, which eventually earned him entrance into Vegas Hall of Fame. Then he did what any rock musician would do and ditched the entertainment biz to earn a law degree; eventually working as a legal rep for several tech and entertainment giants, including Lucasfilm and Pixar (hence the Buzz Lightyear connection).
But his love for music never waned – as he puts it, he learned “the best way to be a musician is not to do it for a living.” In 2017, switching from rock to jazz, he founded the Bob Roden Quintet and has been performing around the Bay Area ever since. One of his favorite joints is Riggers Loft in Richmond, to which he will return with his band from 2-5 p.m. Sept. 20 ($5, riggersloftwine.com/#). Sadly, it’s expected to be the quintet’s final show at the scenic venue before it closes. Roden and band also perform at the Piedmont Harvest Festival, which runs 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Sept. 21 at Piedmont Park, 711 Highland Ave. Admission to the event, which includes a farmer’s market, food trucks and an edibles contest, is free.
Details: More information is piedmont.ca.gov. Oh, and if your kids like music, Roden’s CD “Mammals Eat Coconuts” is a popular item on Spotify.
— Bay City News Foundation
‘Vengeance’ on stage in Walnut Creek
With the Trump administration busy suing news outlets and seeking to muzzle its critics and perceived enemies, the subject of censorship has rarely seemed so topical and so concrete. It’s at the center of “Indecent,” a production playing through next weekend at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek. “Indecent” is actually a play about another play that was penned in 1906 and caused a huge commotion when it opened on Broadway in 1923. That play, “God of Vengeance,” centered on a Jewish brothel owner who seeks to become “respectable” by marrying off his daughter to a yeshiva student. The New York run of “Vengeance” was aborted when the producer and cast were arrested (and eventually convicted) on obscenity charges. The charges stemmed not from the brothel aspect of the play, but because it was considered an attack on the Jewish religion. In 2015, playwright Paula Vogel – known for probing controversial topics in her works – recounted the “God of Vengeance” controversy in her play “Indecent,” which got its Broadway debut in 2017 and won a pair of Tony Awards. The play was produced by San Francisco Playhouse in 2022 and is now being presented by Center Repertory Company through Sept. 28.
Details: Tickets are $74-$85; go to www.centerrep.org.
— Bay City News Foundation
