Non Stop Bhangra performs its highly danceable style of traditional Punjabi music on on Friday during the free Bhangra and Beats street party in downtown San Francisco. (Courtesy Non Stop Bhangra)
Freebie of the week: One of San Francisco’s most popular downtown block parties returns this week, ready to kick your fun-stamina into high gear just in time for the holidays. Bhangra and Beats, a free downtown event held four times a year, marks its final go-round for 2024 on Friday from 5 to 10 p.m. along Clay and Battery streets in the Financial District. There will be lively music and movement featuring Non Stop Bhangra, a human dance party that spins out supercharged traditional Punjabi music with contemporary influences, as well as Dholrhythms Dance Company performing traditional Indian dance. Dance lessons will be offered, or you can bust your own moves; it’s not like anyone will stop you. There also will be DJs spinning a variety of music, plentiful food stands offering Indian delicacies and a variety of arts, crafts and other vendors. You can get a jump on your seasonal shopping. Between the election, upcoming holiday crunch and everything else going on, there’s a lot of tension in the air. Here’s a fun, free and lively way to blow off a little steam. More information is at bhangraandbeats.com.
Sweet times at SFJAZZ: Bernice Johnson Reagon, the acclaimed composer, vocalist, historian and civil rights icon who died in July, was a groundbreaker, merging contemporary music and activism in the 1960s. She was founding member of The Freedom Singers, which combined Black Baptist congregational music with popular styles and protest songs in a stirring sound that reportedly blew away folk icon Pete Seeger. His love for the group helped it assume a leading role in the emerging civil rights movement. But perhaps Reagon’s most lasting musical achievement was in 1973, when she founded the all-woman vocal group Sweet Honey in the Rock, which took its name from a biblical passage about a land so rich that rocks bled honey when cracked open. True to Reagon’s heritage, the group performs many styles including gospel, blues, jazz and traditional African melodies, while addressing women’s rights, peace, racial tolerance and compassion. Its famed 2010 song “Are We a Nation?” was created as a protest to Arizona’s controversial anti-immigration law SB-1070. The group, on the road celebrating its 50th anniversary, comes to SFJAZZ Center’s Miner Auditorium this week for a four-day run. Performances are 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. Friday’s show is available for streaming. Tickets are $45-$135; go to sfjazz.org.
Yes, we have a Nutcracker: Walnut Creek’s Diablo Ballet is getting a jump on the holiday entertainment season this weekend with its annual performance of Julia Adam’s adaptation of “The Nutcracker Suite.” It won’t be the same production, however; Adam updates the work each year with new characters and choreography. Diablo Ballet premiered its one-hour, 10-minute production in 2019; it has been a season-opening staple for the company since. It’s set in the 1950s and follows the Diablo family, including daughter Clara, as they return from a Christmas Eve performance of the “Nutcracker Suite” at the Fairmont Hotel. Performances are 7:30 p.m. Friday and 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek. Following the Saturday matinee show, there is a party for patrons featuring a meet-and-greet with the cast, dance demonstrations autograph signing and more. Tickets are $30-$58. Go to diabloballet.org
A switch of sorts: The opera “Carmen” flips the genders on the timeworn “seduced and abandoned” storyline: the lover who gets unceremoniously dumped after succumbing to temptation is the guy, not the girl. She does get her comeuppance, however, in an especially brutal way, in the end. San Francisco Opera, for the 35th time, returns to Georges Bizet’s sultry, shocking tragedy from 1875, opening its final 2024 production this week on the War Memorial Opera House stage. Swiss mezzo-soprano Eve-Maud Hubeaux makes her American debut as the fierce and proud Roma Carmen, a role she performed in Vienna, Berlin and Brussels. Singing the part of the bewitched soldier Don José for the first time is Chilean American tenor Jonathan Tetelman, who scored a triumph here as Alfredo in “La Traviata” two years ago. British soprano Louise Alder, also making her U.S. debut, sings as the lovelorn Micaëla, and American bass-baritone Christian Van Horn is the swaggering bullfighter Escamillo. The next performance is at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, with repeat performances through Dec. 1. In-person tickets, $28 to $426, are available at (415) 864-3330 and www.sfopera.com. The 7:30 p.m. Nov. 19 performance is also available to be livestreamed for 48 hours for $27.50.
A digital orchestral assist: Russian pianist, arranger and composer Vyacheslav Gryaznov solved a problem for aspiring concert pianists working at home trying to master the complexities of a difficult concert without the benefit of the orchestral accompaniment. He developed a free app he calls the G-Phil Virtual Orchestra Assistant, a library of recorded music a pianist can use, setting the desired tempo, to support his or her performance. Gryaznov, 42, returns to the Steinway Society in Cupertino Saturday night, digital assistant in tow, to perform the Rachmaninoff Concerto No 1 in F-sharp minor and the No. 2 in C minor, and the same composer’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.” Concert time is 7:30 p.m. at the Visual and Performing Arts Center, 21250 Stevens Creek Blvd., and tickets, $53-$78, are available at (408) 300-5635 or steinwaysociety.com. There is also a streaming option, for $27.50, that makes the performance available for 48 hours.
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