Freebie of the week: The annual Yerba Buena Gardens Festival in San Francisco is in full swing, offering several free performances a week through early October. Shows range from poetry readings to concerts to puppets for kids, a dance/workout class, movie screenings and more. This weekend sees a return to the series by acclaimed Bay Area musician and bandleader Marcus Shelby, who also happens to be the festival’s resident composer. Shelby is well-known in the local music scene for his extended jazz and blues compositions that weave in elements of African American history. On Saturday, his 15-member band performs a show titled “Blues and the Pursuit of Freedom,” made up of segments from previous Yerba Buena Gardens Festival commissions. The work will touch on everything from abolitionist Harriet Tubman, to Black history in baseball, the Ohlone tribelets and even the pandemic. The performance takes place from 2 to 3:30 p.m. on the Yerba Buena Gardens Great Lawn, on Mission Street, between Third and Fourth streets. More information is at ybgfestival.org.
A Goode show: Bay Area choreographer, writer and director Joe Goode is known for creating and presenting highly relatable dance works—ones that capture the pain and passion of everyday life. He is considered a groundbreaking choreographer for combining spoken word, text, film and other sonic and visual imagery into his storytelling; his lauded dance-theater productions include “Body Familiar,” “Gender Heroes,” “Wonderboy” and more. Goode’s site-specific productions have taken place in the cavernous Haas-Lilienthal House in Pacific Heights, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the San Francisco Mint and other distinctive venues, allowing the surroundings to play a primary role in the storytelling process. Now the Joe Goode Performance Group is back with a new work, titled “Are You Okay?” Something of an urgent variant on the “Why Can’t We All Get Along?” theme, it posits that togetherness—he calls it “collaborative creativity” —is more than a lofty notion nowadays; it may be the only blueprint to humankind’s survival in an unstable world. “Are You Okay?,” another site-specific production, is in San Francisco’s Rincon Center, 83 Mission St., opening at 8 p.m. Thursday and running through Aug. 31. Tickets are $48-$60 at joegoode.org.
South-Asian Sass: The South Asian diaspora has had a monumental impact on California and particularly the Bay Area. Those not previously aware of how it’s been felt on local stages can find out this weekend at San Jose Improv or Cobb’s Comedy Club in San Francisco. The clubs are hosting the 11th annual Desi Comedy Fest featuring about a dozen top South Asian comedians. The show has local roots, too. It was co-founded by Bay Area-based comedians: Samson Koletkar, aka Mahatma Moses, who claims to be the world’s only Indian Jewish stand-up comedian; and Abhay Nadkarni, perhaps best known for the comedy special “Brown Jesus,” which is available on Amazon Prime. Other comedians in the 2025 lineup include Ali Mehedi, Aurora Singh, Alisha Dhillon, Bassam Shawl and Bhavya Shah, a Stanford student studying math and computer science (so you know he has to be funny). Performances are 7:30 p.m. Friday at San Jose Improv and 7 p.m. Sunday at Cobb’s Comedy Club in San Francisco. Tickets run from $17-$113.80, go to www.desicomedyfest.com.
A cultural convergence: A truly massive assemblage of musicians —170 chorus members from 10 Chinese cultural organizations, 70 instrumentalists from the Symphony San Jose, five vocal soloists and a virtuosic pipa player gather under the guidance of artistic director Ling Li and the baton of conductor Jun Wang for an East-meets-West performance at 7:30 p.m. Saturday in the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts of composer Xian Xinghai’s 1939 master work “The Yellow River Cantata.” The occasion for this one-time performance, which will be sung in Mandarin with projected English supertitles, is the 80th anniversary of three pivotal events in history: the end of World War II, the end of the Sino-Japanese War and the founding of the United Nations. The cantata is divided into eight sections, each relaying its own message: 1.”The Song of the Yellow River Boatmen,” depicting their navigational struggles on a treacherous waterway, 2. “Ode to the Yellow River,” a tribute to a phenomenon considered the birthplace of Chinese civilization, 3. “The Water of the Yellow River Comes From Heaven,” a poem with music to the river’s power and significance, 4. “Ballad of the Yellow Water,” a lyric piece reflecting on both the beauty of the river and the suffering inflicted by war, 5. “Dialogue Sung by the River,” a duet by refugees determined to fight for their homeland, 6. “Lament of the Yellow River,” a solo from a woman who has lost everything, symbolizing the suffering of the Chinese people, 7. “Defend the Yellow River,” a militant chorus invoking the strong defense of the river and 8. “The Roaring Yellow River,” a powerful finale calling for the Chinese people to fight for their homeland. Tickets to the 90-minute performance (including a 20-minute intermission) are $35-$125, available at sfsymphonysanjose.org.
Another choral masterwork: Longtime artistic director Robert Geary of the San Francisco Choral Society and his 150 singers have been working since May, and have recruited by audition fellow singers from across the country, for a rare performance of Johannes Brahms’ groundbreaking “A German Requiem,” which uses, not traditional texts of the Latin Mass for the Dead, but instead verses Brahms chose from the Lutheran Bible that evoke grief and comfort and consolation for the living. This will be the first time in a decade that Geary and the Choral Society singers, who will be accompanied by the California Chamber Symphony, have returned to the German Requiem. Soloists for the occasion are soprano Cara Gabrielson and baritone Andrew Pardini. The performance, which promises to be beautiful and moving, takes place in San Francisco’s Davies Hall at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, and tickets, $49 to $80, can be purchased through City Box Office at cityboxoffice.com.
The post Best Bets: Marcus Shelby Orchestra, Joe Goode Performance Group, Desi Comedy Festival, ‘Yellow River Cantata,’ ‘A German Requiem’ appeared first on Local News Matters.