Freebie of the week: This week marks the arrival of Tet Nguyen Dan, better known as Tet, the Vietnamese New Year. It’s considered the most important holiday in Vietnamese culture, and is celebrated in a variety of events and functions around the Bay Area, often falling in the same general timeframe as other cultures’ Lunar New Year events. One of the biggest and best-known Tet celebrations in the Bay Area takes place Friday through Sunday in San Jose’s Eastridge Center.
Presented by UStar Productions, the large and festive annual celebration serves up an eye-popping array of entertainment and activities, including lucky money and gift exchanges, lion dancing, a student singing contest, a Miss Vietnam California pageant, a fashion show, performances by K-pop dance groups with their otherworldly choreography, carnival rides, 3-D theme parks for photo ops, and much more. There will also be a wide variety of food and drink on hand.
The event runs from 3 to 10 p.m. Friday and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Eastridge; admission is free and there is plenty of parking at the shopping center. More information is at facebook.com/UStarProductions.
Strings attached: In a world full of strife, violence, suffering and natural and human-born calamities, we feel better just knowing that there’s a show out there titled “The Sex Lives of Puppets.” And it doesn’t change our minds a bit knowing that neither the title nor this show, which runs through Saturday at Stanford University, is being played strictly for laughs. Like sex itself, the stage show created and performed by London-based troupe Blind Summit is about a lot of things. And, as organizers put it, “Sex Lives of Puppets” ranges from funny to insightful to poignant. After all, it gets pretty complicated when you are in an amorous way yet your immediate future is literally in someone else’s hands.
The show also offers an intriguing look at how puppetry is used to showcase and explore such emotions as angst, desire, fear, joy and more. As for the storyline, it is inspired by the U.K.’s National Survey of Sexual Attitude and Lifestyles, which sounds about as sexy as a Three Stooges marathon. But you can’t fault Blind Summit for its overall goal — to deliver an entertaining show that creates a safe forum for a look at sex and all its fantastic and frightening manifestations.
Performances are at 7 p.m. Thursday and Friday and 2 and 7 p.m. Saturday at Stanford’s The Studio venue; tickets are $75.60, with student and Stanford employee discounts available. Go to live.stanford.edu.
The Abraham effect: It’s almost surprising to learn that choreographer Kyle Abraham and his company, A.I.M, will be making their first Cal Performances appearance this weekend. It seems, after all, that the revered dancemaker and the UC Berkeley-based arts presenter are made for each other. Cal Performances is often drawn to performers with big ideas, and Abraham is nothing if not full of big ideas.
Abraham and A.I.M will be in Berkeley to perform a trio of works backed by a seven-piece band that includes two vocalists. A piece titled “2X4,” set to what’s described as an experimental classical score by Shelley Washington, invokes a conversational, at times confrontational, scenario. “The Gettin’” is set to a score by Robert Glasper, who in turn was inspired by “We Insist! Freedom Now Suit” by the pioneering bebop pioneer Max Roach. And “If We Were a Love Song” is a collection of dance vignettes set to what are said to be Nina Simone’s most passionate songs. In all, it seems like a promising night of dance, worthy of Abraham’s first visit to Cal Performances.
Shows are 8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall. Tickets are $33-$91; go to calperformances.org.
A Ludwig lovers’ delight: Charles Schulz’s piano-playing Peanut Schroeder would be turning handsprings. It’s an all-Beethoven lineup in Davies Hall for this weekend’s series of San Francisco Symphony concerts, as Dutch conductor Jaap van Zweden kicks off the first round in a three-season cycle in which he will lead the orchestra in all nine of the composer’s symphonies.
The former music director of the New York Philharmonic (2018-2024), now at the helm of the Seoul Philharmonic, begins the odyssey homage with the light and frothy Symphony No. 2 from 1802 and then winds up the concert with the gorgeous, weightier 1812 Symphony No. 7, nicknamed the “Dance,” renowned for a second movement which bring tears to the eyes and considered by the composer his “most excellent symphony.” Van Sweden returns next season to conduct the Fifth, Sixth and Eighth symphonies and polishes off the cycle in 2027-28 with the First, Third, Fourth and the mighty Ninth.
Performance times are 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday; tickets, $30-$189, are available at sfsymphony.org or by calling 415-864-6000.
An up and comer: A young British-Indonesian keyboard artist named George Harliono, the second prizewinner at the 2023 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition, makes his Steinway Society debut at 2:30 p.m. Sunday at the Visual and Performing Arts Center at De Anza College in Cupertino.
His program, a challenging one, will also be taped and made available for streaming anywhere for 48 hours. He begins with the Bach-Busoni Chaconne from the Violin Partita No. 2 in D minor, followed by Liszt’s “Un sospiro” Etude No. 3, his “Liebestraum” No. 3 and the “Mephisto Waltz” No. 3. Beethoven’s beloved “Moonlight” Sonata comes next, and the recital finishes up with Chopin’s Nocturne in C minor, Glinka-Balakirev’s “The Lark” and Balakirev’s “Islamey: An Oriental Fantasy.”
Ticket prices for the live performance range from $53-$78, available at steinwaysociety.com; the online streaming admission is $26.75 per household. For a preview, consider his excerpts from Stravinsky’s “Petrouchka” from the competition.