Bay Area Tom Petty tribute band Petty Theft performs a free show at Redwood City’s Courthouse Square on Friday. (Courtesy Petty Theft)
Freebie of the week: Redwood City’s Courthouse Square hosts events and gatherings throughout the year, but in summer, it’s really busy. Through late August, the city hosts a variety of free events and performances, some weekly. On Thursday nights, it’s Movies on the Square. Most weeks, there’s a double feature with either a kid-friendly screening at 6 p.m. or a short indie film presented by BraveMaker Independent Film Festival at 8 p.m., followed by a mainstream feature at 8:30 p.m. This weekend, Bay Area filmmaker Jesse Kuba’s “The Moon is in Aquarius” is part of the city’s Juneteenth celebration. The film follows two people who meet at a party and spend a special fun- and romance-filled night in San Francisco. Upcoming movies include “Frozen II” and “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part I” (June 20); A BraveMaker short film and “Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3” (June 27); “Elemental” and “National Treasure” (July 18), and more. On Fridays through Aug. 30, Music on the Square runs from 6 to 8 p.m., featuring such acts as Petty Theft (a Tom Petty tribute band) this Friday, R&B/soul band Patton Leatha (June 21), Latin jazz outfit Orquesta Dharma (June 28), Journey tribute band Faithfully Live (July 5), and more. This Friday also features Art of the Square from 5 to 8:30 p.m. with works by scores of artists in varied media. (Take in the art while enjoying classic rock from Petty Theft.) The entertainment is free; the scene is fun and family-friendly, and there will be plenty to eat and drink there, too. For more information and performance dates, visit redwoodcity.org/residents/redwood-city-events.
Marking a momentous holiday: Celebrations of Juneteenth —recognized as the day (June 19, 1869) that the final vestiges of slavery were abolished —are all over the Bay Area. One of the biggest, with a star-studded cast of performers, is from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at 3529 Adeline St. in Berkeley. The city’s Juneteenth Festival features fabulous Bay Area jazz-blues singer Faye Carol (aka The Dynamic Miss Faye Carol), who was born in Mississippi but moved to Pittsburg at an early age and began wowing folks singing in church. Since the 1960s, Carol has been an indelible part of the Bay Area and national jazz-blues scene. If her current schedule is any indication, she has no plans to slow down anytime soon. The Berkeley bash also features Zydeco accordionist extraordinaire Andre Thierry; singer Dennie Denise Robinson, aka Niecey LivingSingle; veteran blues-jazz singer and guitarist Alvon Johnson, once a member of the Coasters; and the roots-reggae band Kava Jah and the Remedy. For kids, there’s special entertainers, as well as activities: a Kid/STEM zone with rock-wall climbing, skating, art, dancing, storytelling and face painting. Vendors will offer food, drink and other merchandise; and health and community organizations also will be on hand, too. Admission is free. More information is at berkeleyjuneteenth.org.
Jazz with webbed feet: Any time you see a band with a name like GoGo Penguin waddling around, you’re going to take notice. Maybe that was what this Manchester, England, trio had in mind from the start, but after earning critical acclaim for more than a decade, we can forget about novelty being in play here. These guys are legit, even if maybe their sound—a unique blend of rock, jazz, nu-jazz, electronica and classical music—is not for everyone. The trio started to gain serious traction when its sophomore release, “v.20,” was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize, England’s version of the Grammy. The band was part of the Blue Note label’s stable of jazz acts for several years before it signed with the more experimental-minded label XXIV Records in 2021. With two releases in the past two years—2023’s “Everything is Going to Be OK” and this year’s “From the North”—GoGo Penguin lands at the SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco this weekend for shows at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Tickets are $25-$75. Also at SFJAZZ this weekend are rising-star Cameroonian singer Ekep Nkwelle (7 and 8:30 p.m. Friday; $25) and trumpeter Jumaane Smith, a protege of Wynton Marsalis known for his work with Michael Buble (7 and 8:30 p.m. Saturday; $30). Information and tickets for all these shows are at sfjazz.org.
Rom-com, with arias: A posh glam gal with a devoted following has three ardent suitors, but one of them is being pursued, in disguise, by his erstwhile betrothed, who has adopted a bitter male persona to confront him about his betrayal. Meanwhile, the other suitors set about squabbling, and battles and duels ensue—including a proposed contest in which one contender challenges the disguised woman to fight … bare-chested! It sounds like a Marx Brothers comedy, but it dates to 1730, when George Frideric Handel wrote “Partenope,” which is set centuries earlier around the founding of Naples. Yet director Christopher Alden’s updated production, an award-winner, sets all the frenetic action in a Parisian salon in the 1920s. San Francisco Opera, which staged it in 2014, is bringing the high Baroque comedy back to War Memorial Opera House Saturday night, opening a five-performance run. French soprano Julie Fuchs makes her American debut in the title role as the salon hostess; the young Italian countertenor Carlo Vistoli is Arsace, the two-timing suitor who is being dogged by his abandoned Rosmira, sung by Argentinian mezzo Daniela Mack, the Adler and Merola alum who won high praise last summer as Frida Kahlo in the company’s premiere of “El ultimo sueño de Frida y Diego.” American countertenor Nicholas Tamagna and tenor Alek Shrader are Armindo and Emilio, the other men vying for Partenope’s affections. Most performances are at 7:30 p.m., with repeats through June 28, including a livestream made available for the 2 p.m. June 23 date. Tickets ($26-$426; $27.50 for livestream) are at (415) 864-3330 or at sfopera.com.
Triple treat: The San Francisco Symphony’s subscription season concludes this month, and the all-Russian program music director Esa-Pekka Salonen has for this weekend’s concert series seems designed to make us regret that. Up first is the aggressive and challenging Cello Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major, written in 1959 by Dmitri Shostakovich, who seemed to be taking a backward look at struggles of the recently bygone Stalinist era. The soloist perhaps will be recognized by royals fans: British cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, a winner of the BBC Young Musician competition in 2016, was 19 two years later when he captivated audiences in St. George’s Chapel and around the world playing music by Fauré, Schubert and Maria Theresia von Paradis at Harry and Meghan’s Windsor Castle wedding. Next up on the program is the great Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina’s “Fairytale Poem,” in its first San Francisco Symphony performances. Like Shostakovich, Gubaidulina suffered the slings and arrows of the Stalin regime but endured and triumphed, eventually moving to Germany in the 1990s. Her piece was written as a score for an allegorical tale for a children’s radio broadcast and, quite fittingly, premiered under the baton of Shostakovich’s son Maxim in 1971. The program will close with “Francesca da Rimini,” the symphonic tone poem by Tchaikovsky that interprets the tragic story of the young Italian noblewoman whose adulterous affair with her husband’s brother Paolo got them murdered by him and consigned, in Dante’s “Inferno,” to the second circle in hell. Performance are 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday in Davies Hall, and tickets, $25-$139, are at (415) 864-5000 or sfsymphony.org. If you missed it, here is the cellist’s mesmerizing performance at Windsor Castle in 2018.
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