There are a lot of great shows and concerts to catch this week and beyond in the Bay Area. Here is a partial rundown.
Lesher Center concert series is back
Powerhouse Oakland blues and soul vocalist Terrie Odabi and the Anthony Paule Soul Orchestra are regulars on the European summer circuit, performing at blues, jazz and soul music festivals across Italy, Spain, and Scandinavia.
But you don’t need to fork out the air fare to catch this horn-powered act. You don’t even need to buy a ticket, at least not this week. Kicking off the Summer Sounds 2023 series, Odabi and the APSO play a free outdoor show Thursday on the Lesher Center’s Rudney Plaza as part of a series that also includes the world music combo Wobbly World (July 6), the Cajun rock of fiddler Tom Rigney and Flambeau (July 13), and the stylish swing of violinist Mads Tolling and the Mads Men (July 20).
Nominated for multiple Blues Music Awards in recent years, Odabi is a force of nature, and she’s found an ideal vehicle to channel her bountiful energy with guitarist Paule, who’s helped revive the careers of soul greats Wee Willie Walker and Frank Bey.
Details: 5:30 p.m.; 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek; free; www.lesherartscenter.org
— Andrew Gilbert, Correspondent
Spread the word, Mime Troupe is back
Let’s get one thing straight about the San Francisco Mime Troupe right off the bat. These people talk. They are not like the performers who skitter silently about wearing way too much eye makeup and pretending to be trapped in some kind of invisible cage when it’s perfectly obvious that there’s no cage at all. We have no intention of joining the longstanding debate over whether these kinds of mimes are hilarious or just kind of creepy because the San Francisco Mime Troupe, which has been around for more than 60 years, is a different animal entirely. As the company’s website says, “We use the term mime in its classical and original definition, ‘The exaggeration of daily life in story and song.’”
More specifically, the troupe uses silly songs and jokes as the foundation for its particular – i.e., decidedly left of center — brand of political theater. And it’s one of the Bay Area’s grand theatrical traditions that the S.F. Mime Troupe each summer unveils a topical new play which it presents in parks and outdoor venues around the Bay Area for free. This year’s show, titled “Breakdown,” written by Michael Gene Sullivan and Marie Cartier, with music and lyrics by Daniel Savio, focuses on a San Francisco homeless woman who is plucked from obscurity by a Fox News personality to represent all the ways liberal governments fail their people. The show opens July 1 at Cedar Rose Park in Berkeley and plays in spots throughout the Bay Area through Sept. 4.
Details: All shows free; schedule and more info at www.sfmt.org.
— Bay City News Foundation
War & peace with Nduduzo Makhathini
The music of South African pianist Nduduzo Makhathini draws on cultural roots that cross empires earthly and spiritual.
Hailing from an historic 19th-century Zulu kingdom, he was raised with the knowledge that musicians played an integral role in Zulu martial campaigns. At the same time, he grew up playing and absorbing music in a variety of churches, where songs both stately and raucous accompanied worship.
Extending a South African jazz lineage encompassing Abdullah Ibrahim, Moses Molelekwa and Bheki Mseleku, a mentor who connected him with John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme,” Makhathini has become one of South Africa’s most visible and important jazz artists. Featured with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra on a three-night musical celebration of South African music in 2019, he’s released two acclaimed albums for Blue Note since then — 2020’s “Modes of Communication: Letters from the Underworlds” and last year’s “In the Spirit of Ntu.”
For his performances at Freight & Salvage and Kuumbwa music clubs, he’s joined by Johannesburg-born, New Haven-raised bassist Zwelakhe-Duma Bell ale Pere, Cuban drummer Francisco Mela, and California-born tenor saxophonist Aaron Burnett.
Details: 8 p.m. June 29 at Freight & Salvage, Berkeley; $24-$28; thefreight.org; 7 p.m. June 30 at Kuumbwa Jazz Center, Santa Cruz; $21-$42; www.kuumbwajazz.org.
— Andrew Gilbert, Correspondent
Unique exhibit blooms in Walnut Creek
Cacti are weird enough – bulbous, spiny and sprouting flowers and fruits where you’d least expect them.
Take a historic cactus-and-succulents garden and add artwork — like a pregnant woman’s torso made of blue leaves, a motorcycle/spider hybrid or a bust of the moon goddess Selene — and you have the perfect mix of nature and surrealism in Walnut Creek where an outdoor exhibit, Sculpture in the Garden, has taken root in a famous botanic garden.
The 2023 iteration of this event (now in its 29th year) at the Ruth Bancroft Garden and Nursery features 25 local artists and nearly 50 sculptures in media from ceramic to metal to mosaics. Opening night recently drew throngs who admired art strategically placed among serrated fronds and stalks that reached high into the sky like giant, flower-dripping beanstalks. There are wine and art-appreciation events slated at the garden July 7 and Aug. 4.
All of the art is for sale. It’s important to the garden, a spokesman said, to partner with local artists and support the community. And if you like a cactus or other succulent you see, it might be available to purchase for your home garden.
Details: Through Aug. 13; 1552 Bancroft Road, Walnut Creek; hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday; exhibit included with normal admission ($5-12); ruthbancroftgarden.org.
— John Metcalfe, Staff
Dance picks: Tahiti Fete, SFDanceworks
Here are two programs Bay Area dance fans should know about.
Tahiti Fete: As organizers put it, “drums will be pounding and hips will be gyrating” when the 26th annual Tahiti Fete, said to be the biggest Tahitian dance completion in the U.S., comes to San Jose. The four-day event features Tahitian dancers and musicians from the U.S., Mexico, Canada and Japan performing traditional and contemporary dance works, as well as dazzling costumes and vendors offering a wide variety of Polynesian crafts, food and more.
Details: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday through Monday; San Jose Civic; $30 per day; tahitifete.com.
SFDanceworks: The acclaimed company specializing in classic, contemporary and cutting-edge dance works, presents its sixth summer season, consisting of five works presented over four days. Performances include “Gustave Le Gray No. 1” by Pam Tanowitz with live piano accompaniment; an adaptation of a José Limón’s modern dance classic “Danzas Mexicanas”; and world premieres by Bryan Arias, SF-based choreographer Laura O’Malley working with composer Alton Allen, and the West Coast choreographic debut of rising-star Alexander Anderson.
Details: 7 p.m. today (dress rehearsal); 7 p.m. Friday, 2 and 7 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday; ODC Theater, 3153 17th St., San Francisco; $30-$60; www.sfdanceworks.org, odc.dance.
— Randy McMullen, Staff
A sizzling season finale
San Francisco Symphony conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen teams up with the superb soprano Julia Bullock, one of his eight hand-selected Collaborative Partners, to bring the 2022-23 season to a close this weekend with a program of 20th-century songs by George Gershwin and Margaret Bonds. The concerts open with the Symphony’s first performance of Reena Esmail’s “Black Iris,” which takes its name from the famed Georgia O’Keeffe painting, and concludes with Maurice Ravel’s “Daphnis et Chloe,” featuring the San Francisco Symphony Chorus. In between, Bullock will sing Gershwin’s “Somebody from Somewhere,” “Summertime” and “Soon” and Bond’s “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” and “Winter Moon.”
Details: Performance times are 7:30 p.m. June 29-30 and July 1 in Davies Hall, San Francisco; $40-$170; sfsymphony.org.
— Bay City News Foundation
Source: www.mercurynews.com