Freebie(s) of the week: The Bay Area has had a profound effect on the development of two distinctive pop music genres — psychedelic rock and punk — and this weekend two free events celebrate their history in the city.
From noon to 4 p.m. Saturday at the famed concert Bandshell in Golden Gate Park, which hosts more than a hundred free shows each year, the San Francisco Neo Psych Fest features the popular Bay Area band Bolero! — known for its “freak-flag music,” a potent blend of Latin bolero riffs and psychedelic rock. Also on the bill is Spiral Electric, another local psychedelic band that describes its sound as “a mixture of roaring guitars and orbiting synthesizer not heard this side of the galaxy since HAL 9000 dropped acid with Brian Jones and Tony Iommi in the windmills of your mind.” More info on the concert is at illuminate.org.
Meanwhile, a concert billed as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of punk music unfolds at The New Farm communal performance space at 10 Cargo Way from 3-10 p.m. Saturday. Performers include classic Bay Area punk outfits No Alternative, The Sleepers, Society Dog, The Dead Sailor Girls and many more. More information is at sf.funcheap.com.
Albee’s classic: There are a few reasons why Edward Albee’s Tony- Award-winning, Pulitzer-Prize-finalist play “The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?” is the right play for right now. Written 25 years ago, long before “GOAT” emerged as an acronym for “greatest of all time,” Albee’s surrealistic stage drama/tragedy examines some of society’s most time-honored staples — family, morality, love, societal expectations, gender norms, and more. It revolves around a seemingly typical family — a loving couple and their teen son — that falls apart when the husband/father falls in love with a goat.
Albee constructed the one-hour, 45-minute production like a Greek tragedy, and he invites (maybe demands is a better word for it) audiences to examine their own feelings and judgments about the shocking turn of events. Berkeley’s Shotgun Players present the play on Ashby Stage, 1901 Ashby Ave. Directed by Kevin Clarke and starring William Giammona as the husband/father, the production just got extended through May 3. Tickets are $40-$80 and going fast at shotgunplayers.org.
Momentous ride: Playwright Keith Bunin, who was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, might be affiliated most closely with the nonprofit New York City stage company Playwrights Horizons, which has produced three of his works. But he has a special connection to the Bay Area, where his recent “The Coast Starlight” is being presented by San Jose Stage. In an interview with The Lincoln Center, Bunin says he came up with the concept of the unique show while traveling in the Bay Area: “Initially, I was staying at a Hyatt House in Emeryville. The hotel was right next to the Amtrak station, and Emeryville is a stop on the Coast Starlight. That’s when the idea for the play began to take shape.”
The Coast Starlight, as rail fans know, is a famed Amtrak route from Los Angeles to Seattle. Bunin’s play focuses on a particular ride on the route and six passengers whose lives become interconnected during the journey. “There’s something about being on a train — about being between destinations — that allows people to open up in ways they might not otherwise,” Bunin adds. “The play is really about connection, and the moments when strangers suddenly see each other clearly.” San Jose Stage Artistic Director Randall King says, “There’s something special about presenting a play in the region where its story first began to take shape.”
Directed by Rebecca Haley Clark, “Coast Starlight” plays at San Jose Stage, 490 S. First St., San Jose, through April 26. Tickets are $34-$84 at thestage.org.
A pianist nonpareil: San Francisco Performances is delighted to welcome back Richard Goode, the American pianist of incomparable talent who was the first keyboardist from this country to record the complete cycle of Beethoven’s 32 sonatas (frequently referred to as “the new testament” of the piano repertoire), which netted him a Grammy nomination.
A Beethoven selection, Diabelli Variations, Op. 120, published in 1824, is one of two monumental works on the program for Goode’s 7:30 p.m. Friday recital in the Herbst Theatre. The composer labored over it for several years; it has been compared in its breadth and difficulty to Bach’s famed Goldberg Variations. Franz Schubert’s Piano Sonata in B-flat Major, the final work in a trilogy the composer completed two months before his death, comprises the other half of Friday’s program.
Tickets, $65-$85, are available at sfperformances.org.
A well-timed debut: Less than a full week after the actual holiday, the San Francisco Symphony, under the baton of guest conductor Bernard Labadie, renders its first performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Easter” Oratorio, a dramatic, narrative-driven work that, unique among the composer’s oratorios, contains no Biblical text and no Evangelical narrator.
It does, however, employ the talents of soprano Joélle Harvey, countertenor Hugh Cutting, tenor Andrew Haji, baritone Joshua Hopkins and the full complement of director Jenny Wong’s award-winning San Francisco Symphony Chorus. The vocal soloists are also featured in Bach’s “Magnificat,” and his Sinfonia to the cantata “Wir, danken dir, Gott” is also on the program.
Following an open rehearsal at 10 a.m. Thursday in Davies Hall, the three full performances take place at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Tickets are $55-$175, available at sfsymphony.org.
The post Best Bets: SF Neo Psych Fest, ‘The Goat, Or Who Is Sylvia?’ ‘Coast Starlight,’ Richard Goode, Bach’s ‘Easter’ Oratorio appeared first on Local News Matters.