From a truly global dance festival to free Shakespeare and a blues legend, there is a lot to see and do in the Bay Area this weekend. Here is a partial rundown.
Dancing around the world
Looking to circle the globe without leaving the Bay Area? Experience rhythms from countries and cultures around the world at the Peninsula International Dance Festival. The annual two-day showcase featuring 20 local groups performing a myriad of styles.
The Peninsula Lively Arts, formerly Peninsula Ballet Theatre and Conservatory, is producing the festival for the third year. Each day will include a different set of groups and soloists, so pick your favorite lineup or purchase a two-day bundle to take in every style.
The event features dances from India, Mexico, China, Spain, Peru and the U.S. on both days. On Saturday, take in performances from Congo, the Philippines and Japan. Stop by Sunday for Armenian, Aztec, Hawaiian and Greek selections. Sunday’s performance also features longtime favorites Ballet Folklórico Mexicano de Carlos Moreno, based in Oakland, and Theatre Flamenco of San Francisco, both of which have delighted Bay Area audiences since the ’60s.
Details: 7 pm Saturday and 2 pm Sunday; San Mateo Performing Arts Center; $30-$60; www.peninsulalivelyarts.org.
— Cameron Duran, Staff
A night with blues royalty
Arts presenter Stanford Live is serving up a special show on Friday for fans of the blues. And it’s one of those concerts where you will want to be there in time for the opening act. But let’s start with the main act – Henry St. Claire Fredericks Jr., aka Taj Mahal. The 82-year-old New York-born singer, songwriter and musician is generally defined as a blues artist even if he has spent much of his career completely redefining what a blues artist could be. By adding elements of reggae, cajun, Latin, funk, Pacific islander music and more to his sonic repertoire, Taj Mahal either rewrote the playbook on the blues or essentially created his own musical idiom.
Raised in a music-loving family, Taj Mahal studied ethnomusicology in college and has utilized anatural thirst for learning throughout his career. The four-time Grammy winner with more than two dozen studio and live albums to his credit is back on the road and stops at Frost Amphitheatre at Stanford University at 7:30 p.m. Friday. Opening the show is the Elvin Bishop and Charlie Musselwhite Duo, a pairing of a famed blues guitarist (Bishop) and legendary harmonica player that could easily be a headlining act.
Details: Tickets are $15-$165; go to live.stanford.edu
Festival from a whole otter world
Did you know that river otters like to communicate by screaming and touching each other? Or that otter parents push their babies into the water at 2 months of age to force them to learn to swim? Well, you can learn such things and so much more at this year’s Otter Festival, taking place in the prime water-puppy habitat of Big Break Regional Shoreline.
The annual fest offers many family-friendly activities over three days, all dealing with otters. There’s an otter puppet show and an otter story time. Then there’s otter crafting, where kids can make cute animal décor, and an otter play day that features athletic animal skills and hands-on stream tables.
Afterward, you can head to the water to try to spot some otter footprints on the shore mud — or even perhaps the charismatic creatures themselves, as they frolic and hunt for crawfish among the herons and beavers of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
Details: 10 a.m.-noon Friday; 10:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday and 10:30 a.m.-noon Sunday; Big Break Visitor Center, Oakley; free; www.ebparks.org/parks/visitor-centers/big-break.
— John Metcalfe, staff
Latin festival in the East Bay
The Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek this week is hosting a celebration of Latin music, dance, art and comedy that runs through Saturday and features a wide range of A-List performers. Dubbed Fiesta Cultural, the series features the famed Ballet Hispanico (7:30 p.m. Wednesday); the family-friendly music act Lucky Diaz and the Family Jam Band (10 a.m. Thursday), a free show by Colombian singer-musician Chika Di (5:30 p.m. Thursday), the renowned Spanish Harlem Orchestra (7:30 p.m. Friday), a street fair (noon-7 p.m. Saturday) with live music, dance, food and other fun stuff, and a Latinx Comedy Night (7:30 p.m. Saturday) featuring Mean Dave, Ashley Monique, Alejandro Ochoa, Rudy Ortiz and Frida Sierra.
Details: Admission to the street fair is free; remaining ticketed items run $14-$121; www.lesherartscenter.orgn
— Bay City News Foundation
Classical picks: Beatles love; Music@Menlo
The classical music scene goes into full summer mode this week with concerts around the Bay. Here are four highlights.
S.F. Symphony Summer: Events at Davies Symphony Hall and Stanford’s Frost Amphitheater begin at Davies with “Classical Mystery Tour: A Symphonic Tribute to the Beatles,” conducted by Martin Herman (7:30 tonight); additional concerts include “The Movie Music of John Williams” (7:30 July 19 at Davies, July 20 at Frost), “John Legend: A Night of Songs and Stories” (7:30 p.m. July 23-24 at Davies), “Ben Folds with the S.F. Symphony” (7:30 July 27 at Davies), and “The Trailblazing Music of Joni Mitchell, Carole King, and Carly Simon” (7:30 Aug. 1 at Davies.)
Details: Tickets start at $30; sfsymphony.org.
Music@Menlo: Festivals abound this time of year, but they don’t get better than this annual event founded by the husband-and-wife duo of cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han. The 22nd season offers three weeks under the title of “French Reflections,” with music performed by more than forty artists. Highlights include Baroque masterworks, American string quartets, Prelude Performances, talks and more, with this year’s special guests including pianists Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Gilbert Kalish, violinist Kristin Lee, and soprano Erika Baikoff.
Details: Saturday through Aug. 10; Menlo School, Atherton; $25-$85; music@menlo.org.
All things Amadeus: Midsummer Mozart turns 50 this year, with a program featuring pianist John Wilson as soloist in the composer’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor. Also on the program: the Overtures to Mozart’s “La Clemenza di Tito” and “Don Giovanni,” and the great Symphony No. 41, “Jupiter.”
Details: 7 p.m. Saturday at Buena Vista Winery, Sonoma, 3:30 p.m. Sunday at Berkeley City Club; $20-$70; midsummermozart.org.
Carmel Bach: Now in its 87th season, the Carmel Bach Festival returns each year to celebrate its namesake, but expands to include other composers as well. This year’s events, scheduled in and around Carmel, include David Lang’s “Little Match Girl Passion,” music by Lili Boulanger and a “Best of the Fest” closing concert.
Details: Through July 27; various Carmel venues; bachfestival.org.
— Georgia Rowe, Correspondent
Grammy winning African singer comes to Berkeley
After more than two decades in Paris, where she’d fled from her native Ivory Coast during a civil war, Grammy Award-winning vocalist, songwriter, percussionist and dancer Dobet Gnahoré returned home to record her seventh album.
Released last month by Cumbancha, a Vermont-based label formed by ethnomusicologist Jacob Edgar, “Zouzou” was recorded in Abidjan, one of Africa’s largest and most cosmopolitan cities. The music draws on the metropolis’ deep well of talent, and in her only Bay Area performance she brings the infectious rhythms and beguiling melodies of her West African sound to Freight & Salvage.
A sensational performer known for her dance moves, Gnahoré has been one of Afropop’s biggest stars since winning a Grammy in 2010 for “Pearls,” her collaboration with singer India.Arie. In a well-conceived pairing, vocalist Fely Tchaco and guitarist Jesse Sahbi, fellow Ivorians who both live in San Francisco, play an opening acoustic set.
Details: 8 p.m. today; Freight & Salvage, Berkeley; $49-$54; www.thefreight.org.
— Andrew Gilbert, Correspondent
‘Tempest’ touches down in Cupertino
Nothing says summer quite like free outdoor Shakespeare and one of the Bay Area’s best-loved purveyors of that swings into action this weekend. We’re talking about the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, which is embarking on its 42nd season of serving up its Free Shakespeare in the Park. This year’s production, running Saturday through Sept. 8 at three outdoor sites, is “The Tempest.” It’s believed that the Bard penned the play around 1610-11, and that the work represents one of the last plays that he wrote on his own. It centers on a father (Prospero) and daughter (Miranda) who are set adrift at sea by Prospero’s jealous brother. They land at an island filled with strange things and magical creatures and remain there until a tempest washes ashore Prospero’s brother and his henchmen.
Filled with magic, music, intrigue, boisterous (and often silly) sailors, revenge, loyalty and forgiveness, not to mention Act IV’s famous “play within a play” wedding ceremony; the tragicomedy “asks the audience to find the humanity in all the characters they meet,” according to S.F. Shakespeare Festival organizers. “The Tempest” opens 6 p.m. July 20 at Cupertino’s Memorial Park Amphitheater, 21163 Anton Way, and plays there through Aug. 4. Follow-up runs are at Redwood City’s Red Morton Park, Vera Avenue and Valota Road, Aug. 10-25, and at the Jerry Garcia Amphitheatre at San Francisco’s McLaren Park, 40 John F. Shelley Drive, Aug. 31-Sept. 8.
Details: Performances are 6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays; at sfshakes.org.
An afternoon at the opera
Join the nimble members of San Francisco’s plucky little Pocket Opera cast as they gather to sing — in English, as late founder Donald Pippin has recast it — one of the most beloved operas of all time. Giacomo Puccini’s “La Boheme” — the one about the poverty-plagued but fun-loving young Parisians in a garret apartment in the dead of winter — takes to the stage at the Berkeley Hillside Club at 2 p.m. Sunday in a co-production with the Cinnabar Theater. Soprano Diana Skavronskaya stars as Mimi – she of the frozen little hand – and Nicholas Huff is the poet Rodolfo, the guy who is determined to warm her up. His roommates are Daniel Yoder as the painter Marcello, Michael Kuo as the musician Schaunard and Don Hoffman as the philosopher Colline. Melissa Sondhi sings in the pivotal role of the flirtatious Musetta.
Details: $33-$82; www.pocketopera.org.
— Bay City News Foundation
