Your week in concerts: Niall Horan, Hiromi
Niall Horan leads this week’s best bets for concerts in the Bay Area. Here are our picks:
Niall Horan: The One Direction heartthrob is off to a great start in his solo career, having scored a pair of hit singles from his solo debut, the recently released “Flicker.” You might’ve heard at least one of those songs — “Slow Hands” — since it seems to be played on the radio about every five minutes. Horan last week also performed his latest single, “Seeing Blind,” a duet with Maren Morris, at the Country Music Awards. Horan performs Wednesday at The Masonic in San Francisco (and then returns to the Bay Area on Aug. 4 to play Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View.) Details: 8 p.m.; $49.50, www.livenation.com.
Hiromi: The amazing jazz pianist performs a fournight stand tonight through Sunday at the SFJazz Center in San Francisco. Definitely try to catch one (or more) of these shows. Hiromi is fantastic live. Details: 7:30 p.m. today-Saturday, 7 p.m. Sunday; $30-$70; www.sfjazz.org.
Gary Numan: The electronic music pioneer, best known for the smash single “Cars,” rolls into the Fillmore in San Francisco on Sunday in support of “Savage (Songs from a Broken World).” Me Not You opens the show. Details: 8 p.m.; $30; www.livenation.com.
Michael McDonald: The R&B-rock-pop crooner, who did his best work with San Jose’s own Doobie Brothers in the late ’70s and early ’80s, visits the Fox Theater in Oakland tonight. Marc Cohn (“Walking in Memphis”) is also on the bill. Details: 7:30 p.m.; $49.50-$89.50, www.ticketmaster.com.
‘Black Rider’ returns
Rejoice, lovers of avant-garde theater. The mysterious “Black Rider” returns to menace your dreams once more.
A collaboration between singer-songwriter Tom Waits, stage director Robert Wilson and Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs, “Black Rider” is making a comeback in the Bay Area. Staged in 2004 at American Conservatory Theater, now the dark fable is being revived by Berkeley’s edgy Shotgun Players.
Directed by the estimable stage auteur Mark Jackson, an inventive director who brought the memorable “Woyzeck” to life at Shotgun in 2012, this is likely to be a thrilling evening of song, tableaux and despair. Tread with caution into a topsy-turvy realm where musical theater bleeds into carnival nightmare. In Burroughs’ adaptation of a 19th-century German folk tale, a devil’s bargain goes awry for Wilhelm, a lowly clerk, who yearns to marry Käthchen, the daughter of a wealthy man. How will he prove his worthiness if not by making a deal with the devil?
“‘Black Rider’ is a fairy tale for adults about how fear and self-doubt can lead us to sell out our integrity for a shortcut to our hopes and dreams,” said Jackson, who is also noted for directing such epics as “The Death of Meyerhold” and “Faust.” “Waits has a sublime messiness to his music and lyrics. Wilson’s visual storytelling has an equally sublime precision. Burroughs’ sensibility converses perfectly with both. They all share an inspired ability to arrange fragmented language, music and images into moments that express the deep, eternal truths of our inner emotional experiences.”
Details: Friday through Dec. 31; Ashby Stage, Berkeley; $25-$40; shotgunplayers.org
Can GNR still bring it?
— Karen D’Souza, Staff
So, you are thinking about going to the Guns N’ Roses concert Tuesday at Oracle Arena in Oakland. But you don’t know if the band — which put out its last good record way back in 1991 — is still worth seeing live, especially given all the offstage drama surrounding the band and its mercurial singer Axl Rose.
Well, according to the majority of fans’ reports we’ve heard, GNR is definitely on top of its game on this cleverly titled “Not in This Lifetime” tour.
Indeed, some say Rose and company sound better now than they did in their heyday.
Plus, you’ll likely get to hear Slash deliver those epic leads, which rank among the greatest guitar solos in rock ’n’ roll history, on “November Rain” and “Sweet Child o’ Mine.”
In other words, the signs are pointing toward this being a good night for GNR fans.
Details: 8 p.m.; $59.50-$250, www.ticketmaster. com. — Jim Harrington, Staff
‘Fanfare’ benefit for fire victims
Michael Tilson Thomas and his San Francisco Symphony join the rush to aid the Northern California areas hit by last month’s raging wildfires with a benefit concert featuring musical themes that emphasize triumph over adversity.
The Sunday program in Davies Hall opens with Aaron Copland’s stirring “Fanfare for the Common Man” and includes the exultant “Ode to Joy,” the fourth movement from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
There also will be a cappella spirituals sung by bass Solomon Howard and the concluding movement of the Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4. The orchestra, the Symphony Chorus, the guest soloists and the stage crew, ushers and symphony staff are all donating their efforts, and the ticket prices have been kept affordable. All money raised will go to the Redwood Credit Union’s North Bay Fire Relief Fund and the Sonoma County Resilience Fund.
Details: 7:30 p.m.; Davies Hall, San Francisco; $25$50; 415-864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org. — Sue Gilmore, Correspondent
Sacred music from a Queen
Queen Esther Marrow made her concert debut at the age of 22 when Duke Ellington tapped her for a featured spot at his legendary Concert of Sacred Music, which consecrated San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral in 1965. The event launched her career in gospel music, though Marrow also has performed widely in jazz, soul and musical theater settings, with multiple runs in Broadway productions.
In recent decades, she’s thrived performing gospel music around Europe, and is looking to reestablish herself back in the U.S. In a rare return to the Bay Area — she last sang here at SFJazz’s 50th anniversary celebration of the Grace Cathedral concert — Marrow performs two concerts tapping into the region’s deep pool of talent. Like other soul-steeped singers, she’s calling on the invaluable pianist and music director Tammy Hall, whose trio features bassist Aneesa Strings and drummer Ruth Price.
Details: 8 p.m. Friday at Piedmont Piano, Oakland; $20; 510-547-8188, www.piedmontpiano.com; 7 p.m. Dec. 1 at Kuumbwa Jazz Center, Santa Cruz; $25-$30; 831-427-2227, www.kuumbwajazz.org. — Andrew Gilbert, Correspondent
Sax guru meets piano wizard
As one of the Bay Area’s elite jazz educators, heavyweight saxophonist-composer Dann Zinn has mentored more than enough talent to staff an all-star big band.
As director of Cal State East Bay’s jazz studies program and the award-winning SFJazz High School All-Stars combo, he’s usually too busy to take many gigs of his own, but when he does he keeps formidable company. For an upcoming run of shows Zinn has assembled a particularly exciting band with rising bass star Zach Ostroff and esteemed New York drummer Mark Ferber (who graduated from Moraga’s Campolindo High School).
Zinn is also featuring piano virtuoso Taylor Eigsti, who spends much of his time on the road these days with trumpet star Chris Botti. It’s an all too rare opportunity to catch Eigsti in a pure jazz setting, playing Zinn’s arrestingly melodic music.
Details: 7:30 p.m. today and Friday at Cafe Pink House, Saratoga; $20-$23; cafepinkhouse.com; 8 p.m. Saturday at California Jazz Conservatory, Berkeley; $20; cjc.edu. — Andrew Gilbert, Correspondent
Double podium duties for Reif
This is a good week to catch conductor Christian Reif, one of the region’s hottest young podium stars, at Davies Hall.
When Michael Tilson Thomas leads the San Francisco Symphony in three performances of Charles Ives’ Symphony No.4— a work so complex, it typically requires two conductors — Reif will be his wingman; pianist Peter Dugan is the soloist, and the performances will be recorded for future release on the SFS Media label.
The program also includes Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, with Pinchas Zukerman as soloist today and Friday, Viviane Hagner on Saturday.
Reif returns Sunday in his regular gig as music director of the SFS Youth Orchestra; the program features Elgar’s “Enigma” Variations, Detlev Glanert’s “American” Prelude No. 1, and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2. Leyla Kabuli, winner of the Youth Orchestra’s concerto competition, is the soloist.
Details: 2 p.m. today, 8 p.m. Friday Saturday; $35-$159; SFS Youth Orchestra, 2 p.m. Sunday; $15-$55; 415-864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org. — Georgia Rowe, Correspondent Reif