From one among pop music's biggest stars to an opera about Mount Everest to a Leonard Cohen-inspired music festival, there's plenty to see and do within the Bay Area this weekend.
Here is a partial summary.
Carpenter brings Short N' Sweet Tour to Chase
Sabrina Carpenter was not scheduled to play the 2024 Outside Lands Festival.
What became their headlining set originally belonged to Tyler, the Creator. But then the good hip-hop star withdrew from the band, calling Outside Lands “a commitment he could no longer keep.”
Luckily, Carpenter was able to fill the void and ended up making her festival headlining debut on the three-day event in August at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. And she did a improbable job, delighting an enormous crowd of boisterous fans with a dizzying pop music extravaganza that featured as many hits because it did star power.
This performance got here shortly before the singer released her sixth album, “Short n' Sweet,” on August 23, which propelled the 25-year-old Pennsylvania native into the ranks of the world's top pop stars.
Featuring multi-platinum No. 1 hits “Please Please Please” and “Espresso,” the album explains why the Short N' Sweet Tour has grow to be one among the toughest tickets of the 12 months. Expect a really full house when Carpenter returns to San Francisco for a performance on the Chase Center on November ninth.
Details: 7 p.m.; Tickets are $475 and up (through resale markets, subject to vary); Ticketmaster.com.
Ice cream is sweet for the vacations
The last time there was snow that stuck in San Francisco was 1976, so you may skip constructing snowmen unless you're heading to the mountains with the youngsters. But there's one enduring tradition that evokes winter wonders just as much: ice skating in the town's Union Square.
The seventeenth season of out of doors skating, which opened this week, runs through Jan. 20 on the Safeway Holiday Ice Rink in Union Square. It's an awesome opportunity to learn the best way to strap on skates, wiggle like a newborn calf, after which glide across the urban version of a frozen lake like a professional.
Numerous events happen parallel to the rink, including Flashback Fridays with personalities from the radio station Classic Hits 103.7 playing hits from the Nineteen Eighties; classical music on lazy Sunday mornings and a dance party on Black Friday to burn off those Thanksgiving calories.
There shall be a Drag on Ice show on December fifth where a number of the city's best drag queens and kings will dominate this icy catwalk. Then on January 1st, you may ring within the New Year Canadian style by showing as much as the polar bear skate in your skimpiest beachwear.
Details: until January twentieth day by day from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m.; 333 Post St., San Francisco; Admission including skate rental is $20, $15 for youngsters under 8; unionsquareicerink.com
Classics: Vivaldi, “Knoxville,” a mountain of an opera
This week's classical music attractions include the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra's tribute to Vivaldi, a Berkeley Symphony concert with Barber and Bernstein, and one other probability to see Opera Parallele's charming production of “Everest.”
“Vivaldi, Venice and the Four Seasons”: Celebrate Vivaldi's music with the Philharmonia's Baroque Orchestra and Chorale, with mandolin virtuoso Avi Avital leading a program featuring works by the acclaimed composer and a few of his contemporaries. Expect traditional Venetian songs and a performance by soprano Estelí Gomez, who will join the ensemble in performing an aria from “L'Olimpiade.”
Details: Today 7:30 p.m. at Herbst Theater, San Francisco, Friday 7:30 p.m. at Bing Hall, Stanford University, Saturday 2:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, Berkeley; $40-$132; philharmonia.org.
“Stories from home”: The Berkeley Symphony opens its 2024 Symphonic Series with a program featuring soprano Lisa Delan as soloist in Samuel Barber's “Knoxville: Summer of 1915.” Led by music director Joseph Young, the event also includes Bernstein's “Symphonic Dances from West Side Story,” Silvestre Revueltas' “Redes Suite” and the Grammy-winning Bay Area premiere of Kris Bowers' “For a Younger Self.” Violinist Charles Yang as soloist.
Details: Sunday, 4 p.m.; Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley; $25-$85; berkeleysymphony.org.
Up: For opera lovers who haven't yet seen Opera Parallele's production of “Everest,” now’s a great time to go to the California Academy of Sciences. Based on a real story of wonderful courage and featuring performances from tenor Nathan Granner and mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, composer Joby Talbot and librettist Gene Scheer's 68-minute graphic novel opera is breathtaking, and this performance on the Morrison Planetarium underlines that a brand new sense of drama to the already intense experience of opera.
Details: Friday to November seventeenth; Morrison Planetarium, California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco; $35-$56; cityboxoffice.com.
SF is having a free party and also you're invited
As if San Francisco needed another excuse to throw a celebration, here's one other: November seventh is a Thursday! And not only any Thursday, but the primary Thursday of the month! That means the town's “Downtown First Thursdays” event is back, offering plenty of free fun on 2nd Street between Howard and Market Streets (and several other adjoining alleys) from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. A handful of stages and dance halls feature quite a lot of musicians, including special guests Micah Mahinay, aka Noodles, a San Francisco-born Filipino American DJ, and Andre Power, a DJ and producer who makes a speciality of showcasing emerging music artists. In total, the event will feature greater than a dozen DJs and musical performers, including the Mariachi Bonitas, an acclaimed all-female mariachi band that can perform on 2nd Street from 5 to 7 p.m. The program also includes drag performers, a performance by dance troupe Theater Flamenco, fashion shows and quite a lot of other entertainment options, in addition to two outdoor bars and free entry to the Minna Gallery and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Details: For more information, see www.dftsf.com.
Calling all Cohen fans
Leonard Cohen was an enigmatic and sensible songwriter whose compositions enchanted not only a legion of fans but other songwriters as well. Bob Dylan adored him, and there's a reason Cohen, who died in 2016, stays some of the covered songwriters in history. With his probing, often wistful songs based on quiet, slow-building melodies and delightful observations on love, life, sex, politics and pain, Cohen created a catalog of music based on classics like “Dance Me to the End of Love.” . “I am your man” and “Hallelujah”.
This weekend, Cohen's music, poetry and spirit shall be celebrated on the annual Leonard Cohen Festival, a three-day festival of readings and musical performances on the Swedish American Hall, 2174 Market St., in San Francisco. The event takes place from Friday to Sunday and is hosted and arranged by Conspiracy of Beards, a San Francisco-based men's choir that makes a speciality of performing Cohen's music. The Beards will perform, as will musicians reminiscent of American singer-songwriter Ruby Lee Hill and the band Ismay, in addition to writers reminiscent of San Francisco Poet Laureate Genny Lim.
Details: Performances begin day by day at 7:30 p.m.; $34.43-$44.73; www.sfleonardcohenfest.com.
The aspiring comedian is coming to Stanford, Sonoma
He makes some extent of not revealing his age, but comedian Mike E. Winfield has a youthful look and demeanor that suits him well on stage. This holds true even when he talks about his youth in a troublesome neighborhood in Baltimore, recalling how he once found a gun under his mother's pillow (“I couldn't wait for my teeth to fall out,” he says ), or of his uncomfortable indoctrination into parenthood when he married a much older woman whose son was about his age. His personable, cheerfully delivered autobiographical humor made Winfield successful on the tv series “America's Got Talent,” where he was a finalist, and is fueling his meteoric profession as a standup comedian with two taped comedy specials and a lot of late-night appearances ahead and an Emmy nomination for him. Winfield is coming to the Bay Area this week for performances at two venues.
Details: Friday, 7:30 p.m. on the Sebastiani Theater in Sonoma ($25; events.sebastianitheater.com); Saturday, 7 and 9 p.m. at Stanford University's The Studio, presented by Stanford Live ($15-$50; live.stanford.edu)
A season opener
Music Director Joseph Young and the Berkeley Symphony open the orchestra's 2024-25 season on Sunday at 4 p.m. in Zellerbach Hall on the UC Berkeley campus with a program called “Stories from home.” Fittingly, the pieces actually come from North America, starting with “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” by Samuel Barber, composed for orchestra and voice in 1947 and based on a brief prose piece by James Agee. Soprano Lisa Dean, an acclaimed interpreter of American art songs, is the soloist. Also on the schedule is the Bay Area premiere of “For a Younger Self,” a concert by Oscar-winning composer Kris Bowers that can highlight Grammy-winning violinist Charles Yang. Leonard Bernstein's jazz-influenced “Symphonic Dances from West Side Story” and the Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas' “Redes Suite” from his film music round off the concert.
Details: Tickets, $25-$85, available at www.berkeleysymphony.org.
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