Freebie of the week: Fall is such a terrific time for festivals in the Bay Area. Perhaps the best-known of this weekend’s festivals is the Half Moon Bay Art and Pumpkin Festival (9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday on Main Street between Mill and Spruce streets; hmbpumpkinfest.com) which is highlighted by the annual collection of ginormous gourds (a byproduct of the Grand Champion Pumpkin contest), at least one of which we guarantee will look a lot like Bill Clinton. But another, lesser-known favorite is the annual Harvest Festival in Berkeley. The event features a large Kids Zone and Tot Zone (always a must) and an impressive array of food contests (best pickle, best cookies, best homegrown fruits and vegetables, best salsa and many more) as well as a full live-music lineup that includes the terrific Richmond-born “accordion soul” Creole musician Andre Thierry, the 10-member Latin rock/soul band Soucano and the soulful Baycoin Beats. The event put on by the city of Berkeley runs 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday at Cedar Rose Park in Berkeley. Admission is free. Go to berkeleyca.gov.
Celebrating Festival of Lights: Diwali, one of the world’s oldest and most significant religious holidays, emerged in India in what is believed to be between the seventh and 10th centuries. In its most elemental forms, it celebrates the victory of good over evil, or light over dark, and thus it is known as the Festival of Lights. Annually observed in October or November, it’s being celebrated in large and small, public and private events throughout the Bay Area. The Lesher Center in Walnut Creek, at 1601 Civic Drive, hosts a variety of events on Friday and Saturday. On Friday, there’s a performance by popular comedian Hari Kondabolu, who discovered his taste for standup as a college student and got his big break after appearing in the Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle, when an HBO rep saw his act. The creator of the documentary “The Problem with Apu,” a reference to the Indian character on “The Simpsons,” he regularly addresses Indian stereotypes in his standup routine. He performs at 7:30 p.m. on Friday; tickets are $56-$91. Also on Friday, there’s a free outdoor drone light show at 9 p.m. (probably just as Kondabolu’s show concludes). On Saturday, the center hosts a street fair from noon to 4 p.m. featuring dance and music performances, storytellers, artisans and food vendors, as well as workshops on how to make a mandala, a geometric design associated with the holiday. Information about these events is at www.lesherartscenter.org.
‘Tis the season for fresh starts: Conductor Kedrick Armstrong dives headlong into his second year leading the Oakland Symphony at 8 p.m. Friday in the Paramount Theatre with a colorful program concluding with Igor Stravinsky’s dazzling suite from “The Firebird.” The piece, composed in 1910 for a Ballets Russes production, immediately launched the young composer and the dance company to international fame and was recast as an independent orchestral suite in 1919. One critic present gushed, calling it “the most exquisite marvel of equilibrium that we have ever imagined between sounds, movements and forms.” The concert is anchored by pianist Sara Davis Buechner and the orchestra performing Maurice Ravel’s delightful Piano Concerto in G Major, composed for its 1932 debut almost simultaneously with the much more difficult Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, and pleasing the composer immensely with its critical reception as “a divertissement de luxe.” Also in the concert: prolific American composer Adolphus Hailstork’s Symphony No. 1, which he directed at its first performance at Ocean Grove, New Jersey, in 1988. British composer Anna Clyne’s “This Midnight Hour,” a “noirish nocturne” inspired by two dreamlike poems and first performed in 2015, opens the program. Find tickets, $25-$92, at oaklandsymphony.org.
Another new beginning: The Bay Area’s prestigious purveyor of early music, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale, opens its 2025-26 concert season at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre in the first of a series of concerts labeled “Fury and Heartbreak.” The overarching theme of the program is the depiction of heroic women destroyed by love. Václav Lutz conducts the performances, with celebrated soprano Maya Kherani taking the stage first as “Ariadne Abandoned” in the work by Benedetto Marcello about the Cretan princess done wrong by Theseus on the island of Naxos; and then as “Armida Abandoned” in the Handel cantata featuring the Saracen sorceress who unwisely falls for the crusading Christian knight Rinaldo, whose purposes she is supposed to thwart. Grief and rage ensue in this “hell hath no fury”-themed program. Also in the lineup, which opens with Galuppi’s Concerto for Strings No. 4 in C minor, are Durante’s Concerto for Strings No. 2 in G minor and Vivaldi’s “In furore justissimae irae” (“In the Fury of Most Righteous Wrath”), which will bring things to a fitting conclusion. Other performances are scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Saturday in Berkeley’s First Congregational Church and 2:30 p.m. Sunday at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. Visit philharmonia.org for tickets, $20-$125.
Teng time: When Vienna Teng develops a passion, she gets really good at the pursuit, and the public benefits because two of her biggest passions are music and saving the planet. Growing up in the South Bay, Teng took to music almost from the start, playing classical compositions on the piano at age 5. She started recording her first album “Waking Hour” while a student at Stanford University and spent much of the early 2000s establishing herself as a talented singer-songwriter-pianist with a knack for literate and tuneful compositions incorporating chamber pop, folk and classical. In 2012, Teng began devoting more time pursuing work in the clean-renewable energy field and relocated to the East Coast, though she would occasionally visit and play an occasional gig. Now she is reportedly ready to devote more time to her music. On Sunday, she’ll appear at Stanford, playing the much-raved-about Viano String Quartet in a program that includes Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 10 (aka, the Harp Quartet) and several of her most popular songs. The concert begins at 2:30 p.m. at Bing Concert Hall; tickets are $16-$72.20; go to live.stanford.edu.
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