Bay Area arts: here are 9 great shows to see this weekend

There are a lot of great Bay Area shows and exhibit to catch this weekend and beyond. Here’s a rundown.

Classical picks: Yuja Wang, ‘Tosca,’ Handel

Here are three classical music performances, including a superstar pianist and two classic works, that classical music fans should know about.

Yuja Wang returns: The phenomenal pianist Yuja Wang, who recently played four Rachmaninoff concertos back to back in Carnegie Hall — and, according to the New York Times, “didn’t seem to have broken a sweat” — is reuniting with the San Francisco Symphony for two events this week. First, she joins music director Esa-Pekka Salonen in Rachmaninoff’s epic Piano Concerto No. 3, on a program that also includes Salonen’s “Nyx” and Gabriella Smith’s “Tumblebird Contrails,” inspired by the composer’s hikes at Point Reyes National Seashore.

Wang is also scheduled to appear at the Symphony’s March 4 SoundBox event, titled “Codes”; curated by Nico Muhly, the program features contemporary composers Muhly, Salonen, Caroline Shaw, and Billy Childs.

Details: 7:30 p.m. March 1-2; Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco; $125-$300; 9 p.m. March 4; $250; www.sfsymphony.org.

Thrill to “Tosca”: With its mix of high-stakes romance and political intrigue, “Tosca” takes the stage in a new production by Livermore Valley Opera. Puccini’s thrilling melodrama, directed by Bruce Donnell, features soprano Ann Toomey as Tosca, a role she has previously sung at Opera Naples and Sarasota Opera; tenor Alex Boyer is her lover, Cavaradossi, and baritone Aleksey Bogdanov is the evil Scarpia.

Details: 7:30 p.m. March 4 and 11; 2 p.m. March 5 and 12; Bankhead Theater, Livermore; $20-$98; livermorevalleyopera.com.

“Solomon” in Berkeley: Returning from their first-rate appearance with Handel’s “Alcina” at Cal Performances in 2021, the English Concert is back to perform another of the composer’s masterworks. This time, it’s the oratorio “Solomon,” with the superb early music ensemble conducted by Harry Bicket and joined by the Clarion Choir. Soloists include Swedish mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg in the title role.

Details: 3 p.m. March 5, Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley; $21-$125; calperformances.org.

— Georgia Rowe, Correspondent

Goodbye to Gershwin

Performer and musician Hershey Felder is saying farewell to one of his favorite musical muses, but not before they go on one last tour together.

Felder, long a popular performer in the Bay Area, is known for his compelling shows, featuring top-notch piano playing and storytelling, focusing on the lives and music of such iconic composers as  Beethoven, Chopin, Leonard Bernstein, Irving Berlin, Tchaikovsky, Debussy and more.

This week, Felder is coming to Mountain View to perform one of his popular works, “George Gershwin Alone.” It is said to be the Felder’s final tour performing as Gershwin, an icon he has reportedly portrayed more than 3,000 times.

Gershwin composed more than a thousand songs — including “Fascinating Rhythm,” “I Got Rhythm,” “’S Wonderful” and “They Can’t Take That Away from Me,” not to mention the tunes from such musicals as “Porgy and Bess” and “An American In Paris.” The output is all the more jaw-dropping when you consider he died of a brain tumor at age 38.

Details: 8 p.m. March 2-3, today 2 and 8 p.m. March 4, 2 and 7 p.m. March 5; Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts; $45-$65; www.mvcpa.com.

— Randy McMullen, Staff

Spotlight on art (literally) in Oakland

The concept of “public art” gets a bad rap sometimes. But just because some municipalities ruin a perfectly good wharf or park by erecting statues that look like protozoa that got the worst of a kickboxing match doesn’t mean we should abandon the concept. Especially when it’s of the communal gathering variety. That’s what Oakland has going on this Friday when the Mobile Light Art Station pays a visit. The Station, owned and operated by the Bay Area nonprofit Immersive Arts Alliance, is equipped with projector and audio equipment and will beam works by six cutting-edge Bay Area artists onto the building known as “The Great Wall of Oakland,” 415 W. Grand Ave, between Broadway and Telegraph Avenue.

Participating artists include Zeina Barakeh, who’s had images projected in New York’s Times Square and on the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, as well as Elaine Buckholtz, Can Buyukberber, Heesoo Kwon, Davey Whitecraft, and Ian Winters. Immersive Arts Alliance director Clark Suprynowicz describes the art/projection effect as “visual poetry which is by turns whimsical, elegiac, subversive, and utopian.” The evening also includes a spoken word performance by Oakland Poet Laureate Ayodele Nzinga, a reading by Roberto Bedoya, author of “The Ballad of Cholo Dandy” (he’s also the Cultureal Affairs Manager for the city of Oakland), and dance, music and spoken word performances by students from Oakland School of the Arts.

Details: 7-9 p.m.; free; www.immersiveartsalliance.org.

— Bay Area News Foundation

Vegas’ favorite pet comedy comes to Bay Area

On March 4, people will gather in a stately 112-year-old theater that has hosted operas, symphonies and all manner of theatrical productions to watch, well, stupid pet tricks. But these aren’t any old pet tricks. We’re talking about the world famous Gregory Popovich Pet Comedy Theater show. Popovich, a fifth-generation Russian circus performer and impresario and graduate of the Moscow Circus School, has built this production around a menagerie of 30 or more pups, kitties, mice, parrots and a miniature horse – all rescue animals – who perform a variety of skits and stunts ranging from eye-popping to giggle-inducing. Popovich and his team of human entertainers toss in a variety of circus acts – juggling, gymnastics and other feats of agility – for good fun (and because even the most determined pet performer needs a rest now and then).

Popovich and his Pet Comedy Theater have been a popular family show in Las Vegas for years, but this weekend you can catch the production at the Empress Theatre in Vallejo.

Details: 2 p.m. March 4; 330 Virginia St., Vallejo; $17.85-$33.85; empresstheatre.org.

— Bay Area News Foundation

Two sides of Gillian Margot

Possessing a velveteen-plush voice, precise phrasing and a wide-open stylistic palette, jazz vocalist Gillian Margot learned her craft from some of the music’s most commanding figures.

The Toronto native was mentored by fellow Canadians like piano legend Oscar Peterson and veteran vocalist Carol Welsman, as well as American jazz royalty like pianist/vocalist Freddy Cole and ace accompanist Norman Simmons. Her command of R&B, pop and art songs has led to performances with Sting, soprano Kathleen Battle, trumpeter Chris Botti, and pianist Robert Glasper, but she’s also a gifted songwriter herself.

On Saturday she plays an intimate duo set with her husband, jazz piano great Geoffrey Keezer at Oakland’s Piedmont Piano Company (where Keezer plays a solo recital earlier in the day). And on Sunday she leads a quartet with Keezer, drummer Sylvia Cuenca and bassist Essiet Essiet (who like Keezer was in the last iteration of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers) at Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society, focusing on her original songs from the 2020 Ropeadope label album “Power Flower.”

Details: 8 p.m. Saturday at Piedmont Piano Company, Oakland; $35; www.piedmontpiano.com; 4:30 p.m. Sunday at Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society, Half Moon Bay; $35-$45 ($10 livestream); bachddsoc.org.

— Andrew Gilbert, Correspondent

Rock ‘n’ roll portraits

Herb Greene, who emerged as one of America’s best-known rock music photographers of the 20th century, at first wanted to be an illustrator, like his mother. But, as the story goes, he took a high school arts class and discovered he had zero talent for drawing. Try photography, his teacher suggested. It turned out to be good advice. Around the time he was taking photography classes at City College of San Francisco and living in an apartment near the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, Greene bumped into a musician named Jerry Garcia and the two became friends.

Greene’s entry into San Francisco’s psychedelic rock scene and his knack for photography and particularly portraiture helped launch a three-decade-plus career during which he photographed bands and musicians including the Grateful Dead (with whom he forged a years-long friendship), Jefferson Airplane and singer Grace Slick, Janis Joplin, Jeff Beck, the Pointer Sisters, Carlos Santana, Sly Stone, Led Zeppelin, and more. His works graced magazine spreads, books and album covers, including the one for the classic Jefferson Airplane release “Surrealistic Pillow.”

Greene retired from rock photography in the late 1990s, and now the Haight Street  Arts Center, 215 Haight St., is opening what’s described as Greene’s first career retrospective, complete with scores of photographs and other aspects of his work and career and a reproduction of the famed “hieroglyphics wall” in his apartment that served as a backdrop to many of his best-known photographs.

Details: Through May 28; free admission; haightstreetart.org.

— Bay Area News Foundation