Free bookstore crawl, with chocolate: San Francisco’s prize-winning sci-fi author Charlie Jane Anders, host of the long-running Writers with Drinks series and the organizer behind the less frequent Bookstore and Chocolate Crawls, is indeed a huge supporter of our local independent bookstores. In that capacity, she is encouraging folks to attend the latest incarnation, an Emergency Bookstore and Chocolate Crawl, to be held for the first time on both sides of the Bay between 1 and 4 p.m. Saturday to benefit four bookstores that are under duress. It kicks off at Medicine for Nightmares at 3036 24th St. in the Mission, which sustained damage to many of its books from recent flooding. It moves on to Adobe Books (just up a block on 24th), which also suffered similar damage from the same storm. Participants are then urged to jump on BART at the 24th and Mission station to venture across the Bay to Rockridge, to hit Pegasus Books at 5560 College Ave. around 3 p.m. and move on to East Bay Booksellers at 6022 College, the new location it moved to after its old site was damaged by fire. Registration here is available, but not necessary, because the event is free.
A welcome return: James Gaffigan, former associate conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, is back in Davies Hall this weekend as a guest conductor, leading the orchestra in an intriguing program of music by Missy Mazzoli, Samuel Barber and Sergei Prokofiev. Gaffigan, now the music director at both the Berlin Comic Opera and the Queen Sofia Palace of the Arts in Valencia, Spain, will open the concert with SFS’ first performance of American composer Mazzoli’s “Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres),” which has been described as “a cosmic hurdy gurdy, flung into space” and features the bassoon, French horn, trumpet and trombone doubling on harmonicas. Next up is the Barber Violin Concerto, the only one he ever wrote, showcasing the prodigious talents of Ray Chen, a first prizewinner of both the Yehudi Menuhin and the Queen Elisabeth competitions, who plays a Stradivarius instrument once owned by the great Jascha Heifetz. Gaffigan brings the concert to a close with Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5, considered by most to be his greatest, written near the end of World War II when American and Russian cooperation was at its height and a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic. Time magazine described it as “a great, brassy creation with some of the intricate efficiency and dynamic energy of a Soviet power plant and some of the pastoral lyricism of a Chekhov countryside.” Concert times are 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, and tickets, $49-$199, can be found at sfsymphony.org.
Rachmaninoff is in the house: Hershey Felder took an unusual route to his role as a performer spotlighting the world’s greatest composers. The Canada native worked in Los Angeles with the Steven Spielberg’s USC Shoah Foundation, where he interviewed Holocaust survivors as part of a drive to record their personal histories. A short time later, he attended the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, when he met a survivor of the Polish death camp who recounted that he was ordered by the guards to whistle Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” This inspired Felder to write a musical about Holocaust survivors with Gershwin’s music. By 1999, after interviewing several members of the composer’s family, Felder created a solo stage show titled “George Gershwin Alone.” A quarter century later, Felder has performed around the world in solo shows focusing on the music and lives of legendary classical composers. This week, he brings his 12th and reportedly final show in the series to TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, where he has staged several productions. “Rachmaninoff and the Tsar” centers on famed Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943), who was equally known as a virtuosic pianist. The production—with Felder playing the composer and performing some of his best-known music on piano—takes place after Rachmaninoff relocated to Beverly Hills and was in failing health, and finds the great musician nearly obsessed with the memory of a tragic encounter with Russia’s Tsar Nicholas II and the Tsar’s daughter, the Grand Duchess Anastasia. Unlike Felder’s previous shows, this one incorporates a second actor (Jonathan Silvestri as Tsar Nicholas II), but otherwise consists of what Felder fans have come to revere: great music and musical storytelling. “Rachmaninoff and the Tsar” plays Friday through Feb. 9 at the Mountain View Center for the Arts. Tickets are $34-$115; go to theatreworks.org/.
A folk legend weighs in: Among pop cultural developments of the 1970s was so-called “women’s music,” a version of folk created by feminist and lesbian artists overlooked by the mainstream record business. Meg Christian, Margie Adam, Holly Near, Linda Tillery and Cris Williamson addressed not just LGBTQ and feminist issues, but a wide variety of social and anti-war themes. Of these artists, Williamson made one of the biggest splashes 50 years ago with “The Changer and the Changed,” which went on to become one of the genre’s best-selling albums and one of best-selling independent record releases of all time. The fact that it was released on a small label, Olivia Records, and features an all-female production and musical staff, also helped cement the album’s place in history. Williamson is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the album on a tour that stops at the Freight & Salvage in Berkeley for two shows this weekend. But the folk icon won’t just be looking backward. Williamson will also spotlight the album “Ravens and the Roses,” which came out last month. She has more than 30 studio and live albums to her credit, if you’re keeping score at home. Williamson performs at 7 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday; tickets are $54-$79. Go to thefreight.org.
Playing dress-up: These days, drag performers are ensconced in the American mainstream. But once upon a time in America, the concept gave some people the heebie-jeebies. It didn’t matter if the guys doing the cross-dressing were red-blooded males who were just disguising themselves to avoid getting eviscerated by the mob. We are talking, of course, about the story in the 1959 classic film comedy “Some Like it Hot” directed by Billy Wilder and starring Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis. Even though Lemon and Curtis’ cross-dressing was played for laughs, and even though the film was a commercial and critical success from the start (it received six Oscar nominations), it was denied approval at the time by the Motion Picture Production Code, a set of Hollywood moral guidelines established in 1934. The code was enacted after a few scandals had stained Hollywood’s reputation, but by the late 1950s, more and more filmmakers had begun to defy it, and in 1968, it was replaced by the Motion Picture Association of America’s film rating system. It should be noted that “Some Like it Hot” essentially was a remake of a 1935 French film “Fanfare of Love,” which also was remade in Germany in 1951 as “Fanfares of Love.” Neither generated much controversy. Now comes “Some Like it Hot,” the stage musical that has not generated anywhere near the kind of feverish handwringing as Drag Queen Story Hour. This 2019 show, with music and lyrics by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (the duo behind “Hairspray”) and a book by Matthew López and Amber Ruffin, debuted on Broadway in 2022 and won four Tony Awards, including for choreography and costumes. The national tour has stopped at Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco, where it will play through Jan. 26. Tickets start at $55.50; go to broadwaysf.com.
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