Bay Area arts: 11 great shows and concerts to catch this weekend
From Oakland Symphony tackling a beloved work to a famed Japanese modern artist and arguably the biggest pop band on the planet, there are a lot of compelling shows to catch in the Bay Area this weekend and beyond.
Here is a partial roundup.
Classical picks: ‘Eroica’; Escher String Quartet; more
Summer’s almost here, and classical music fans have a range of great events in the coming weeks. With symphonic works, chamber delights, and operatic thrills on the calendar, here are three of the highlights.
"Eroica" in Oakland: Highlighting its season finale, the Oakland Symphony is going big this week with Beethoven's beloved Symphony No. 3, "Eroica." Music director Kedrick Armstrong leads the performance with a stellar lineup of vocalists: soprano Shawnette Sulker, mezzo-soprano Krysty Swann, tenor Terrence Chin-Loy, and bass Kenneth Kellogg. Zach Salsburg-Frank leads the Oakland Symphony Chorus. The program also includes "The Ordering of Moses" by R. Nathaniel Dett.
Details: 8 p.m. May 15; Paramount Theatre, Oakland; $25-$92; oaklandsymphony.org.
Chamber music specials: The Escher String Quartet returns to San Francisco to welcome Grammy Award-winning flutist Brandon Patrick George for a program at the Presidio Theatre; music on the program includes works by Barber, Ginastera, Mozart, Verdi and others.
Details: 3 p.m. May 17; Presidio Theatre, San Francisco; $35-$69; cityboxoffice.com.
Opera Galore: San Francisco's acclaimed Merola Opera Program, which each year introduces young artists at the start of their careers, has an array of summer works on this year's calendar. Looking ahead, events include a June 25 recital, productions of Peter Brooks' "La Tragédie de Carmen" and Strauss' "Ariadne auf Naxos," and the much-loved Merola Grand Finale.
Details: More information is at Merola.org.
— Georgia Rowe, Correspondent
A red web of memory
One of the most stunning local exhibits, in terms of pure visual impact, is under way at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. "Chiharu Shiota: Two Home Countries" presents the work of the Japanese modern artist, complete with a room strung wall-to-wall with intricate and blood-red webbing.
This is the first solo museum exhibition in the Bay Area by the Berlin-based artist, following recent shows in New York, Vienna, China and Milan. The centerpiece is a monumental work called "Diary," which is an 88-foot-long intricate network of yarn that invites visitors to come in and explore.
Caught in the web’s knots are pages of diaries from Japanese soldiers and German citizens during World War II. By making literal connections among the scrawled memories, the artist honors these past lives as well as her own dual heritage. "I feel that these soldiers in the end did not die for the country," she says, "but as a human being."
The exhibit also includes "Two Home Countries," a crimson dress unraveling into a chaos of cords that slither upward into the gallery, and the artist’s set designs for a theatrical psycho-drama called "(Kinkakuji: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion)." There are also performance videos and paper works examining the artist’s own physical self and experiences as a cancer survivor. Writes the museum: "As she questions the body's place in the universe, Shiota finds unexpected beauty in its vulnerable depths."
Details: Exhibit runs through July 20; hours are 1-8 p.m. Thursday and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday-Monday; 200 Larkin St., San Francisco; $20 adult admission (plus $10 for the special exhibit); asianart.org.
— John Metcalfe, Staff
BTS tour barrels into Bay Area
This year has further underscored one thing that we’ve long known to be true in the concert industry: BTS is big business.
Just ask Stanford University, which is set to host these K-pop superstars for three huge sold-out shows as part of the band’s blockbuster 2026-27 world tour. BTS is set to play Stanford Stadium May 16, 17 and 19.
The BTS tour - which kicked off on the band’s home turf in South Korea in April - marks the band’s long-awaited return to the stage.
Just how long-awaited?
Well, these shows are BTS' first headline performances as a group since 2021–2022's Permission to Dance on Stage tour, which only consisted of 12 gigs across three cities — Seoul, Las Vegas and Pasadena. One has to go all the way back to 2018 to find the last time BTS performed in Northern California, when the group brought the Love Yourself World Tour to Oakland Arena.
This BTS current tour "will feature a 360-degree, in-the-round stage design. The immersive setup places the audience at the center of the experience while allowing for increased capacity at every venue," according to a news release.
Details: Showtime is 7 p.m. for all three shows; tickets are listed as sold-out on ticketmaster.com, but are still available through resell sites.
— Jim Harrington, Staff
In new ‘Amadeus,’ Mozart wins again
A reboot, remake, reinterpretation or whatever term you deem to call it tends to be held to a higher standard than other films or series. so it’s easy to understand why “Amadeus,” Starz's five-episode take on Peter Shaffer's 1979 award-winning play about the eqo-driven battle between a man of mediocrity (jealous composer Antonio Salieri) and a man of mad genius (Wolfgang "Amadeus” Mozart) gets compared to what has come before.
Even decades later, Milos Forman's opulent, grand 1984 award winner with F. Murray Abraham and Tom Hulce remains a tough act to follow, and this also opulent but sexier version does exist in the cast of that film's shadows. Still, showrunner Joe Barton's production is good enough, thanks to the dedication of its two leads - Paul Bettany 9 ("Wandavision") as the conniving and cruelly envious Salieri and Will Sharpe ("The White Lotus" season 2) as the bad boy groundbreaking composer with daddy issues. They do a commendable job of putting their stamp on their fictionalized fatal rivalry. The are some technical issues and some scenes are overly melodramatic, but the series perks up whenever it focuses on Mozart creating and cavorting and Salieri trying to ingratiate himself with others for fame and attention while conspiring against Mozart.
Details: First episode is available on the STARZ app and all STARZ streaming and on-demand platforms; new episodes released on Fridays.
— Randy Myers, Correspondent
Here’s your freebie of the week
Ensemble for These Times is more than a group of musicians with a cool moniker (E4TT). The talented Bay Area-based chamber music group is like an open window to an exciting and compelling world of contemporary and classical compositions that many casual music fans have never experienced. The award-winning outfit, founded not quite 20 years ago, consists of soprano, artistic executive director and co-founder Nanette McGuinness, cellist Megan Chartier, pianist Margaret Halbig, and composer, co-founder and senior artistic advisor David Garner, and works with a revolving cast of guest artists.
The group has commissioned more than 60 world premieres, and its works embrace fascinating themes ranging from the Cassandra Complex (the curse of telling the truth but having no one believe you) to outer space to the hideous 1930s mass-bombing of Guernica and the famed Picasso painting that captured it. This week, E4TT is releasing its sixth album, "El Tiempo Latine," consisting of new arrangements exploring a wide range of contemporary Latine composers. To celebrate the release, E4TT will perform a concert at 7:30 p.m. May 16 at the Center for New Music, 55 Taylor St., San Francisco. The program will touch several of the composers covered in the album, including Gabriela Lena Frank, Tania León, Carla Lucero, Claudia Montero, Brennan Stokes and José Bragato.
Details: The concert is free (donations are welcome), although it's advisable to RSVP at www.e4tt.org/index.html. You can also catch a livestream of the performance at E4TT's YouTube channel.
Cultural heritage on display at the Bedford
The Nahua people of Mexico constitute one of the country's largest indigenous groups and, as such, have created a wealth of folk art and storytelling. Take Inocencio Jiménez Chino, for example, who has been creating drawings, painting and other works since he was teenager in the 1960s. Like many Mexican artists in the mid-20th century, Chino got his start at a time when so-called "Tourist Art" became popular as the country began drawing recreational visitors from around North American and the rest of the world. Although he was taught to mimic the commercial and non-confrontational style of the time, Chino couldn't resist the temptation to pursue his own style and ideas, including a trio of line-drawings protesting a proposed dam.
His work ever since has been inspired by his vivid imagination along with stories and legends reflecting life on the Balsas River basin in Guerrero, where he has lived his whole life. Now the Mexican artist is getting his first solo retrospective, with a collection on display at the Bedford Gallery in Walnut Creek. Most of the works are colorful paintings rendered on amate, including a series of paintings collectively titled "Uncle Rabbit and the Wax," something of an allegorical tale of clever critters outsmarting those in power. "Aztec Stories in Modern Mexico: An Inocencio Jiménez Chino Retrospective" runs at the Bedford - located inside the Lesher Arts Center at Civic Drive and Locust Street - through June 26.
Details: Gallery hours are noon to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday; admission is pay what you can; more information is at www.bedfordgallery.org/home.
— Bay City News Foundation
And another freebie
Golden Gate Park's beloved bandshell is, as usual, hosting a bunch of cool free music this summer, including a Friday performance by a band determined to carry on San Francisco's impressive blues/rock/psychedelia legacy. And by that we don't mean they play "Truckin'" five times a week. The Wreckless Strangers are more interested in putting out new music – their own new music, mind you – which they will do with an album titled "Dirty Souls," due for release March 27. As the band notes, a couple of tracks off the new collection "Dirty Soul" and "The Runaround," have already been released and have dented the playlists of a few rock and Americana music charts. Wreckless Strangers describe their "Ameri-Cali Soul" sound as a fertile mix of some of the greatest parts of Bay Area music history, touching on artists ranging from Bonnie Raitt to Boz Scaggs to Lost Planet Airmen to Sly and the Family Stone. The band – featuring lead singer Amber Morris, lead guitarist and singer David Noble, bassist and singer Joshua Zucker, drummer/singer Mick Hellman, guitarist and singer Rob Anderson and keyboard player Fletcher Nielsen - performs 4:30 p.m. May 15 at the Bandshell.
Details: More information is at www.wrecklessstrangers.com.
— Bay City News Foundation
A preeminent presence at SF Symphony
The venerable Herbert Blomstedt, conductor and music director of the San Francisco Symphony from 1985-1995, is in his 98th year and still active as conductor laureate of the orchestra. He returns this week to lead the ensemble through three performances of Gustav Mahler's Ninth Symphony, a monumental work – and the composer's last completed symphony – that traverses through a sea of emotions, fueled, but only in part, by the grief he felt over the death of his 4-year-old daughter the summer before he began composing it in 1908. The four-movement work begins in anguish but courses through a bucolic, cheerful ländler and a rather violent burlesque before resolving into a final Adagio that critics have long characterized as a quiet but solid affirmation of life. In honor of Blomstedt's return to the podium, the orchestra will be outfitted in formal white tie and tails.
Details: Performances are 7:30 p.m. May 15-16 and 2 p.m. May 17 in San Francisco’s Davies Hall; $30-$185; www.sfsymphony.org.
— Bay City News Foundation
Singing on the signing
Oakland-based intergenerational vocal ensemble Cantare assembles the joint forces of its Adult Chorale and its Aurora Choir of high school age singers to present a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence at 7:30 p.m. May 16 in the Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church at 49 Knox Drive in Lafayette. Called "Until All of Us Are Free," the concert pays homage to the concept that true liberty only exists when it applies to everyone. Selections on the program run the gamut of eras and styles, including William Billings' "Chester" from the Revolutionary period, the setting of Walt Whitman's “Song of Democracy" by Howard Hanson and the song "Keep Marching" from the current Broadway hit musical "Suffs." In tribute to those who have served in our armed forces, there will also be a medley of well-known military anthems, plus a rendering of Garth Brooks' "We Shall Be Free."
Details: Admission is “pay what you will," with a suggested $25 donation or $50 for a "pay it forward" donation; cantareconvivo.org.
— Bay City News Foundation
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