This week we offer our second round of fall preview pieces in Arts & Culture. In these pages you'll find coming attractions in fall films, art museum shows, and the San Francisco Symphony and Opera seasons. Here are a few more highlights in classical music that caught our eye.
Bay Area audiences will be among the first in the U.S. ever to hear Scarlatti's operatic masterpiece "The Glory of Spring." Nicholas McGegan will lead Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra with guest artists Nicholas Phan and Diana Moore in a historically informed performance of La Gloria di Primavera, a newly-uncovered "lavish and complex serenata by Italy's premier 18th-century opera composer, Alessandro Scarlatti." Plays First Congregational Church in Berkeley, Sun., Oct. 4, at 7:30 p.m. & Sat., Oct. 10, at 8 p.m.; Bing Concert Hall in Palo Alto, Wed., Oct. 7, at 7:30 p.m.; and Herbst Theatre in SF, Fri., Oct. 9, at 8 p.m. Tickets start at $25: call (415) 392-4400 or go to cityboxoffice.com
Bay Area Rainbow Symphony kicks off its eighth season with its opening concert on Sat., Sept. 5, 8 p.m. at SF Conservatory, 40 Oak St., SF. Music director Dawn Harms leads the orchestra in Shostakovich's Festive Overture; Ravel's Piano Concerto in D Major (for left hand), Keith Porter-Snell, piano; and Franck 's Symphony in D minor. Info & tickets: bars-sf.org.
California Symphony and music director Donato Cabrera open their 2015-16 season at Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek on Sun., Sept. 20, at 4 p.m., with Passport to the World, a smorgasbord of international offerings from composers including Sibelius ("Karelia Suite," "Finlandia"), Dvorak ("Slavonic Dances"), Debussy ("Girl with the Flaxen Hair," "Clair de Lune"), Falla ("Ritual Fire Dance"), Rimsky-Korsakov ("Procession of the Nobles"), Grieg ("The Last Spring"), Elgar ("Pomp and Circumstance"), Vaughan Williams ("Fantasia on Greensleeves"), and Gliere ("Dance of Russian Soldiers"). Tickets ($42-$72) are found at californiasymphony.org.
Berkeley Symphony's season opening concert is Wed., Oct. 14, at 7 p.m., with conductor Joana Carneiro leading Canadian soprano Simone Osborne and the orchestra in Berlioz's "Les nuits d'ete." The orchestra also performs the West Coast premiere of Kaija Saariaho's "Laterna magica," premiered in 2009 and inspired by Ingmar Bergman's autobiography, and Ravel's "Bolero," at Zellerbach Hall. Berkeley Symphony will also give the US premiere of "Fachwerk" by Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina on Thurs., Dec. 3, 8 p.m. at Zellerbach Hall. Norwegian bayan (classical accordion) innovator Geir Draugsvoll, for whom the work was written, makes his Bay Area debut as soloist. Also on the program: Giovanni Gabrieli's "Canzon septimi et octavi toni" and "Sonata pian e forte," and Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition." Tickets for both events are available at berkeleysymphony.org.
The Oakland Symphony opens its 22nd season with its new name and a West Coast premiere by Bay Area composer Mason Bates on Fri., Oct. 2, at 8 p.m. at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland. The program, with music director Michael Morgan on the podium, includes Bates' "Devil's Radio," Prokofiev's "Violin Concerto" with guest soloist Kenneth Renshaw, selections from Brahms' "Liebeslieder Waltzes" with the Oakland Symphony Chorus conducted by Lynne Morrow, and Rachmaninoff's "Symphonic Dances". For info and tickets ($15-$75), visit oaklandsymphony.org.
The Jarvis Conservatory (1711 Main St., Napa) will present the renowned SF-based Cypress String Quartet (Cecily Ward, violin; Tom Stone, violin; Ethan Filner, viola; and Jennifer Kloetzel, cello) in the Beethoven String Quartet Concert Series, a two-year series featuring the complete string quartets of Ludwig van Beethoven on three Saturday evenings (Oct. 24, Jan. 27, May 14) at 7 p.m. The concert on Sat., Oct. 24, will feature Beethoven's String Quartet in F, Op. 18, No. 1; String Quartet in F, Op. 135; and String Quartet in F, Op 59, No. 1. General admission $40, series tickets $96, at?jarvisconservatory.com/cypressquartet.
Pound Cake
What's up with our favorite Bay Area Latina lesbian comic this fall? Writer/performer Marga Gomez's "Pound," a sexually-fueled tour de force, plays Brava Theater Center, Oct. 15-Nov. 15, after a critically acclaimed run in NYC. Here's the squib: "A ladies room fisting catapults a celibate celesbian through a vaginal portal to a cloud where notorious lesbian cinematic archetypes hook up in spectacularly meta ways." We don't know what any of that means, but wowza! Info: brava.org.
Bowl Us Over
Future is now: Out There attended the media lunch preview for Eatsa, SF's first automated cafe with no servers or cashiers, downtown at 121 Spear St. Eatsa offers a range of yummy quinoa bowls for an impressively low price point, $6.95. You punch in your order at a self-service kiosk, then pick up the food in an automated "cubby system" when it flashes your name. Everything comes in combinations of fresh, flavorful offerings that you can customize to taste.
We sampled a Bento Bowl, with stir-fry quinoa, edamame, wonton strips, teriyaki sauce, miso portobello, and apple-cabbage slaw. We'll return to try out the Mediterranean (pita chips, arugula, feta, tomato, cucumber, artichoke hearts, dill yogurt sauce, Greek-style quinoa, kalamata olives, marinated chickpeas), and there are plenty of other variations to tempt us. It's food that's fast without being fast food. Two additional CA locations will open by the end of the year. It's like a 21st-century take on the old Horn & Hardart Automats. Check it out at www.eatsa.com.