Arts & Events

THURSDAY, MARCH 12 -more-

The Berkeley High School Alumni Jazz All-Stars, featuring musical director Peter Apfelbaum, will perform Sunday afternoon in almost 20 different groups to honor band director and teacher Charles Hamilton’s 27 years of service. -more-

Going into Bridgehead Studio in Alameda—practically across the street from the Nob Hill Market on Blanding—the newly-collaged doorway, a real portal now, is the first thing to catch attention. Then, inside, is the “Isolated Beauty” exhibit, featuring works in different visual media which parallel the theme of The Hermit Bird, the original play by John Byrd that Virago Theatre Co. is premiering at the studio. (The band Pike County will play before this Friday’s performance—also thematic to the region in which the play is set.) -more-

Stripped of its overtly political satire, Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte premiered their adaptation of Marriage of Figaro, proclaiming a new form of musical theater. San Francisco Cabaret Opera’s production (under the aegis of Goat Hall) teases out the vaudeville still lurking in the sleek new—or Neo-Classical—model, once again fusing entertainment with lavish singing. The show started last weekend in San Francisco and now, with some changes in cast and accompaniment, migrates to the Hillside Club, a few bucolic blocks east of the Gourmet Ghetto. -more-

If you think Jewish music is confined to singing Hava Nagila at Jewish summer camp, well get ready to have another nagila. The Jewish Music Festival, now in its 24th year, features music in Hebrew, Ladino, Yiddish and English performed by a cosmopolitan array of singers and musicians representing traditions that range from the Sephardic Balkans, European classical, Eastern European Chasidic and klezmer, Indo-European Gypsy, Middle Eastern Mizrachi as well as blues, jazz, swing, bluegrass, gospel, rock, punk and hip-hop. In whatever lands that Jews have lived, they have absorbed musical influences and in turn have influenced the music of their adopted lands. Nowhere has this been truer than in the United States. -more-

Bay Area Baroque Orchestra, a group of Bay Area musicians led by conductor Frances Blaker, will play a program of Corelli, Bach and Lully at 4 p.m. Sunday, Mar. 15 in Richmond. -more-

Adventure in Music, the second installment in Berkeley Symphony’s new family concert series, led by conductor Ming Luke and featuring San Francisco Opera violinist Dawn Harms, will include “Spring” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Violin Concerto in D Major”; Leopold Mozart’s “Toy Symphony”—and the theme (by Danny Elfman) from The Simpsons TV series. -more-

American Bach Soloists bring Favorite Cantatas of their namesake to First Congregational Church at 8 p.m. Saturday (lecture at 7), a show that will also play in Belvedere, San Francisco and Davis, featuring remarkable baritone William Sharp, excellent singers soprano Yulia Van Doren and alto Jennifer Lane, and Bach Soloists’ own extraordinary tenor, musical director Jeffrey Thomas. $10-44. (800) 838-3006. http://americanbach.org. -more-

Russian actor-director Oleg Liptsin, who has presented a piquant Beckett’s Happy Days and a remarkable staging of Dostoyevsky (Notes From Underground as Apropos of the Wet Snow) in Berkeley, will premiere the first part of his latest project, The Nose, a solo show centered around Gogol’s Overcoat, celebrating the great Russian author’s 200th anniversary. 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Phoenix Theatre Annex, 414 Mason St., Suite 406, San Francisco (near Union Square). $15-20. (415) 944-1555. http://phoenixtheatresf.org, http://theatreensemble.org. -more-

Some of you may remember Rube Goldberg. He’s a favorite case study of mine when it comes to home remodeling. If you know who he is, you’re giggling now. Rube, a UC Berkeley grad and local engineer (he worked on the sewer systems in San Francisco!) invented cartoon machinery that would perform one simple task in 20 or more complicated and ludicrous steps. -more-

THURSDAY, MARCH 12 -more-