Free jazz: Anyone who’s lived in the Bay Area long enough knows the second weekend in August delivers the twin towers of the summer music season: Outside Lands in Golden Gate Park and San Jose Jazz’s equally impressive Summer Fest. Yes, two of the biggest musical bonanzas of the year for some zany reason are scheduled for the same freaking weekend. From Friday through Sunday, Outside Lands (sfoutsidelands.com) serves up a dizzying array of pop, rock and hip-hop stars on several stages with headliners ranging from the Killers to Sabrina Carpenter to Sturgill Simpson and San Jose’s own EDM star Dan Griffith, aka Gryffin. Meanwhile, Summer Fest (summerfest.sanjosejazz.org) takes over several stages and venues in downtown San Jose with entertainers ranging from The Family Stone to Lisa Fischer (who also plays Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage Friday and Saturday) to Herbie Hancock and much, much more. Summer Fest also has a free music component that’s not as well-known. It’s called Summer Fest Club Crawl, and it serves up a variety of artists, DJs and bands at five downtown nightclubs: Poor House Bistro, Sushi Confidential, Signia at Hilton San Jose, the club in San Jose Marriott, and Rollati. The lineup includes artists like Lauren Halliwell’s Blues Chasers, singer Dana Salzman, the Love Supreme DJs, vocalist Jessica Johnson, and the Afro-Cuban outfit Sofrito. Also, the event will live-stream some events from its YouTube channel. Go to the Summer Fest website for details.
A tempting trio: That gutsy little company known as West Edge Opera is in the middle of its annual summer festival, held this year at the Scottish Rite Temple in Oakland, and this weekend offers opportunities to see all three of its offerings. Friday night at 8 p.m. brings the welcome return of its wildly popular condensation of Wagner’s gargantuan four-opera cycle, “Legend of the Ring,” starring Tracy Cox as Brunnhilde, Philip Skinner as Wotan and Alex Boyer as Sigmund/Siegfried, directed by Sam Helfrich and conducted by Jonathan Khuner. Saturday’s 8 p.m. production is a reprisal of “Jaqueline,” a highly innovative and award-winning work centered around the famous cellist Jaqueline du Pré, whose brilliant career was cut short by her struggles with multiple sclerosis. Soprano Marnie Breckenridge stars, and the single other role in the piece is taken by cellist Matt Haimovitz (in real life, a former protege of du Pré), who plays – her cello. Sunday at 3 p.m, it’s San Francisco composer Nathaniel Stookey’s “Bulrusher,” based on the award-winning play by Eisa Davis, a world-premiere work commissioned by West Edge that revolves around a young mixed-race girl growing up in Mendocino County. Soprano Shawnette Sulker shines in the role of Bulrusher, so named because she was found as a baby in a basket by a river. Davis, whose play was short-listed for a Pulitzer in 2007, co-wrote the libretto with composer Stookey. Find tickets, $22-$162, at westedgeopera.org.
Freebie noontime concert: Extend your weekend a bit by taking in a free noontime concert, sponsored by Noontime Concerts, appropriately enough, at Old St. Mary’s Cathedral, 660 California St. in San Francisco, on Tuesday at—you guessed it—noon. You’ll be entertained by two highly talented local musicians: Evan Kahn is the principal cellist of the San Francisco Opera and the New Century Chamber Orchestra and Opera San Jose and the San Jose Chamber Orchestra, so it’s safe to say he gets around quite a bit. He will be accompanied by pianist Amy Zanrosso, a faculty member and chamber music coach at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music who freelances frequently with other Bay Area musicians and who co-founded the RossoRose Duo with violinist Alisa Rose. On their program is the Sonata for Cello and Piano in C Major by Beethoven and the one by that same description by Benjamin Britten, as well as Alexander Glazunov’s Mélodie for Cello and Piano. Find more information at noontimeconcerts.org.
In with the new: TheatreWorks Silicon Valley was founded in 1970 by Robert Kelley with the idea that it would serve as a lightning rod for new works allowing young playwrights to address the stormy and uncertain times. Some things never change. The times, they are still stormy and uncertain, and TheatreWorks is still deeply immersed in the development and presentation of new plays. The company has developed more than 70 new works over its history, including the early 2000s hit “Memphis,” which went onto win a Tony Award in 2010. Like many TheatreWorks world premieres, “Memphis” got its start at the company’s acclaimed New Works Festival, which returns Friday for a 10-day run of semi-staged readings at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto. The year’s shows include “Five & Dime,” a musical based on “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean” and featuring nationally acclaimed transgender performer Shakina; “Hysterical,” Molly Bell’s solo show about the “terrors and triumphs of a suburban mother with too much on her mind”; “Liebling,” a dramedy focusing on two novelists, one Cambodian and one German; and “A Driving Beat,” featuring a hip-hop-fueled mother-son road trip. Single tickets are $25; festival passes are $60-$65; more information and a complete schedule are at theatreworks.org
Kid-ding around: It’s always fun and certainly interesting when Kid Koala comes to town. The Canadian DJ, turntablist, producer, composer, musician, filmmaker, multimedia performer and comic book aficionado creates musical stage productions unlike anything you’ve ever witnessed. He is back in San Francisco this week with his quirky multimedia concert production “The Storyville Mosquito” at SFJAZZ Center through Sunday. Kid Koala, born Eric San, emerged in the mid-1990s as a scratcher with mad turntable skills and a knack for incorporating odd samples (everything from Charlie Brown TV special snippets to comedy routines to people sneezing) to grand effect. He added his talents for stage and screen producing, storytelling and filmmaking to his arsenal to create multimedia shows like “Nufonia Must Fall,” about a lonely robot finding love, and now “Storyville Mosquito,” about an ambitious insect who leaves home with dreams of becoming a jazz star. The show features a cast of 14 performers, producers and musicians backed by large-screen projections. Basically, it’s a concert incorporating hip-hop, pop, rock, ambient and jazz music accompanied by the live creation of a new movie projected onstage. Or it’s a live graphic novel with cool tunes. Performances are 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 3 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 7 p.m. at SFJAZZ Center’s Miner Auditorium. Tickets are $30-$110; go to sfjazz.org.
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