From one of hip-hop’s most creative talents to an art exhibit skateboarding and the return of Pocket Opera, there is a lot to see and do in the Bay area this weekend.
Here’s a partial rundown.
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Bay Area fans were bummed when Tyler, the Creator removed himself from the 2024 Outside Lands bill for undisclosed reasons. (Yet, let’s face it, a lot of those frowns turned upside down once organizers announced that none other than Sabrina Carpenter would serve as the fill-in headliner.)
Still, Tyler fans did miss seeing the hip-hop superstar at the festival. Fortunately, they’ll have plenty of chances to make up for that as Tyler, the Creator returns to Northern California to perform three big shows.
The Grammy-winning rapper performs Sunday at Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, Monday at Oakland Arena and March 5 at Chase Center in San Francisco. (And that’s on top of the truly impressive half-dozen gigs also listed on his tour schedule at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.)
Tyler is touring in support of his chart-topping eighth studio album, “Chromakopia,” from last year. The record follows 2021’s “Call Me If You Get Lost.” Fellow rapper Lil Yachty — a true rising star in the hip-hop game — opens the shows.
Details: Showtimes are 7:30 p.m. for all concerts; tickets start at $140 (subject to change); ticketmaster.com.
— Jim Harrington, Staff
Classical picks: Fleur Barron, Pocket Opera, more
This week, Bay Area music organizations are offering some of their most appealing shows of the season. Here are three events you won’t want to miss.
Barron returns: Back in 2023, Bay Area audiences were lucky enough to experience the San Francisco Symphony’s production of “Adriana Mater” by Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho. One of the stars of the production was Singaporean-British mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron, who gave an unforgettable performance in the title role and won a Grammy Award for her work on the opera’s recording. Now Bay Area music fans have another opportunity to experience her artistry, as part of the San Francisco Performances concert series. She’ll perform, accompanied by pianist Kunal Lahiry, in a wide-ranging program of works by Mahler, Messiaen, Ravel, Ruo, Weber, Weill and others.
Details: 7:30 p.m. Feb. 26; Herbst Theatre, San Francisco; $50-$70; sfperformances.org.
Trifonov at Davies: At the San Francisco Symphony, Esa-Pekka Salonen welcomes pianist Daniil Trifonov for a performance of Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 2. Also on the program: Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring,” along with the world premiere of Xavier Muzik’s S.F. Symphony-commissioned “Strange Beasts.” The event includes a pre-concert talk with Muzik, the third winner of the Emerging Black Composers Project, and Benjamin Pesetsky.
Details: 7:30 p.m. Feb. 21-22, 2 p.m. Feb. 23; $36.75-$199; sfsymphony.org.
Pocket Opera around the Bay: Pocket Opera, the Bay Area company known for its English translations crafted by founder and music director emeritus Donald Pippin, launches its 48th season this weekend. First on the calendar is Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro, with performances in Mountain View, Berkeley, and San Francisco; still to come this season are “A Pocket Magic Flute,” Kirke Mechem’s “Tartuffe” and Offenbach’s “La Vie Parisienne.” Artists for the season include Bay Area star soprano Shawnette Sulker and bass-baritone Eugene Brancoveanu.
Details: “Marriage of Figaro,” Feb. 21 through March 2; pocketopera.org.
— Georgia Rowe, Correspondent
Skateboarding history in art
Ah, 1976 – the leap year that saw the U.S. Bicentennial, the birth of Apple Computer and the first successful Mars landing. And if you were into subculture it was a pretty groovy year for California skateboarding, too, as evidenced in a new show at Danville’s Museum of the San Ramon Valley. Jeff Heyman, a photographer based in Orinda (heymanfoto.smugmug.com), spent that year as a student at a local high school where he worked for the school rag, The Wolf Print. One of his projects was documenting the skateboarders at Montevideo, a drainage ditch in San Ramon where, as legend has it, much of the modern sport of skateboarding began.
In “Montevideo: Skateboarding History in the San Ramon Valley,” Heyman presents 20 rare, black-and-white images showing what was going down at this pivotal moment in history — young skaters from all over Northern California grinding, ollieing and having fun in the sun, long hair and bare chests and all. Check it out before the exhibit rolls away on June 8.
Details: Hours are 1-4 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday and noon-3 p.m. Sunday; 205 Railroad Ave., Danville; $5 general admission; museumsrv.org.
— John Metcalfe, Staff
Unleash the sounds — Noise Pop is back
Once upon a time, the phrase noise pop referred to a genre of music defined by elements of rock and pop music punctured with feedback and dissonance and told stories about people who were in general not happy with the way their lives were going.
But music fans in the Bay Area have long since recognized the phrase as the name of an annual music festival that brings a wide range of rock and pop acts to the Bay Area for a 10-day music explosion that includes some 50 concerts and other events. As usual, the lineup is a head-spinning mix of A-List rock and pop acts, including stars like St. Vincent, the Bay Area’s own Fantastic Negrito and Death Cab for Cutie frontman Benjamin Gibbard; critics darlings like the exciting young hip-hop star Earl Sweatshirt and indie rockers Mercury Rev; and a boatload of emerging artists that — who knows? — might become your next favorite music act.
This marks Noise Pop’s 32nd year, and although there might be a slightly heavier tilt toward established acts compared to its early years, the festival is a goldmine for music nerds and casual fans alike, and ranks up there with the Sketchfest annual comedy festival as happenings the Bay Area is truly lucky to call its own.
Details: Today through March 2; various San Francisco venues; Tickets vary per show, all-show general admission badges $289.71; information, complete schedule, tickets and more is available at www.noisepopfest.com.
— Randy McMullen, Staff
Civic Music sets free concerts
Freebie of the week: The San Francisco Civic Music Association is an outgrowth of sorts of the city’s Civic Symphony, which was founded nearly a century ago by a woman whose name free music lovers throughout the Bay Area will recognize – Mrs. Sigmund Stern. Nowadays, the Civic Music Association continues to be associated with free music – both as a community orchestra that welcomes musicians of all experience levels, and as a source of free concerts in the city. One of those free performances is offered on Saturday afternoon. The three-part program kicks off with 20th-century Irish/English composer Elizabeth Maconchy’s String Quartet No. 3, Op. 15.
The concert also includes a work by Bay Area composer, musician, teacher and self-described “inner-child advocate” Kadie Kelly, who will join with her quartet to perform her work “Storied Generations” a composition of “memory, lineage and transformation” for three flutists and piano. Concluding the concert will be a performance of Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 25. The performance runs 3 to 5 p.m. at the Noe Valley Ministry, 1021 Sanchez St., San Francisco. The venue is a lovely spot that hosts a wide variety of musical acts and other performers.
Details: For more information on Civic Music Association and its schedule of free concerts, go to www.sfcivicmusic.org.
— Bay City News Foundation
Just for laughs
Let’s face it, we need comedy right now like never before, whether it is of the escapist variety or helps us bore into the existential truth of our utterly surreal world. Fortunately, there is a lot of it about. One of this week’s Bay Area comedy shows is a freebie featuring longtime Bay Area stand-up comedian, author, playwright and devoted pencil musician Danny Dechi, who plays the Bazaar Cafe, 5927 California St., San Francisco (bazaarcafe.com). Meanwhile, San Jose Improv hosts New York comedian Abby Govindan and her hit solo show “How to Embarrass Your Immigrant Parents” at 8 p.m. Thursday ($31.14-$83.16; improv.com/sanjose); rising-star comedian and Tony Award winner Alex Edelman headlines at Stanford University’s Studio venue at 7 and 9 p.m. Thursday and Friday, presented by Stanford Live ($40-$65; live.stanford.edu); veteran comedian and radio personality Nathaniel Stroman, aka Earthquake, holds forth at Tommy T’s comedy joint in Pleasanton for five shows Friday through Sunday ($40-$50; tommyts.com); and Sacramento filipino comedian JR De Guzman brings his “Boyfriend Material” show to Cobb’s Comedy Club in San Francisco for five shows Friday through Sunday ($43-$68, subject to change; www.cobbscomedy.com).
— Bay City News Foundation
Hearts for sale
In an age when immigrants in the U.S. are being targeted for deportation, harassment and blaming and shaming, it’s nice to come across a work that recalls a time when those seeking to take part in the American dream were treated with more common-sense compassion.
One such show is “The Heart Sellers,” Lloyd Suh’s 2023 play about two Asian women, immigrants to the U.S. in the 1970s, who meet and bond over a makeshift Thanksgiving meal while their husbands are working. There’s not much more to the story than that, yet the observations of two women who are greeting a new life in a new world make for a comedic and occasionally poignant production. The show’s title plays off the Hart Cellar Act, which abolished immigrant quotas for some and paved the way for more immigrant professionals to settle in the U.S. Suh took a much different look at immigration with “The Far Country,” his Pulitzer Prize-finalist play about the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which played at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in spring of 2024.
“Heart Sellers,” a co-production between Aurora Theatre in Berkeley and TheatreWorks Silicon Valley in Palo Alto and directed by Jennifer Chang, plays at Aurora Theatre through March 9, and can be streamed March 4-9; tickets are $23-$46; www.auroratheatre.org. The production moves to TheatreWorks territory, the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, for an April 2-27 run. Tickets are $26.75-$54; theatreworks.org.
— Bay City News Foundation
Love and transformation
Is there a sadder tale from Greek mythology than the story of the doomed lovers Acis the shepherd and the sea nymph Galatea? As Ovid relates it in his “Metamorphoses,” the Cyclops Polyphemus, the one-eyed giant, seething with jealousy, smashed the gallant Acis to a pulp with a boulder. But the bereft Galatea, both beautiful and resourceful, changed Acis into an immortal spirit of a river so that their love would never die. Many have been captivated by the tale, but Baroque composer George Frideric Handel in 1718 turned it into a pastoral opera that became the most popular work of his prolific output and is in fact, the only one of his operas that has never been out of the repertoire.
The American Bach Soloists, with an orchestra led by conductor Jeffrey Thomas, has engaged some superb singers to bring it to four different stages across the Bay Area this weekend. Singing the role of Galatea is soprano Nola Richardson, with tenor James Reese at her side as Acis and bass-baritone Douglas Ray Williams as the brutish Polyphemus. The performance run begins at 8 p.m. Friday at St. Stephen’s Church in Belvedere, with repeats at 7 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley, 4 p.m. Sunday at St. Mark’s Church in San Francisco and 7 p.m. Monday at Davis Community Church.
Details: Find tickets, $44-$111, at americanbach.org.
— Bay City News Foundation
