Entertainment fun for whole family
A jazz guitarist like no other
The Chevron Family Theatre Festival is back for its 13th year, offering a dizzying blend of magic, theater, live music, dance and general merriment. On Saturday, Walnut Creek’s Lesher Center for the Arts will host a dozen acts including popular magician (and Bay Area native) Alex Ramon, the engaging art/performance troupe Artrageous, the drummers of San Jose Taiko, a performance of “Cinderella” by the youthful Fantasy Forum Actors Ensemble, and much more. Performances are both inside and outside the Lesher Center, and attendees will have a chance to interact with some of the entertainers involved. Plus, there will be booths along Locust Street offering acting exercises, face painting and more fun stuff. Details: 10a.m.-4p.m.; ticketed performances are $5 each, other shows are free; 925-9437469, www.lesherartscenter.org.
Poised on jazz’s experimental edge, Mary Halvorson is a guitarist, composer and improviser who has created an expansive and utterly unpredictable body of music. She performs with two overlapping but very different groups over the course of a four-night SFJazz residency in the intimate Joe Henderson Lab. Today and Friday, she’s with the cooperative trio Thumbscrew, featuring master bassist Michael Formanek and texture-minded drummer Tomas Fujiwara, an ensemble that released the 2018 companion albums “Ours” and “Theirs” (both on Cuneiform). On Saturday and Sunday, Halvorson takes the helm with Code Girl, her quintet featuring Formanek, Fujiwara, vocalist Amirtha Kidambi and 24-year-old trumpet phenomenon Adam O’Farrill. Introduced last year on the album “Code Girl” (Firehouse 12 Records), the project centers on Halvorson’s spikey, melodically compressed songs, delivered by Kidambi with calm and self-possessed precision. Details: 7 and 8:30 p.m. today through Saturday, 6 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday; SFJazz Center, San Francisco; $30; 866-920-5299, www.sfjazz.org. — Andrew Gilbert, Correspondent
Classic rock films show in Berkeley
The triumph, tragedy and occasional all-out weirdness of rock ’n’ roll comes alive in a film series playing through the summer at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Titled, appropriately, “It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll,” the series continues this weekend with a screening of the acclaimed documentary “Gimme Shelter” by Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin. The documentary captures the Rolling Stones’ 1969concert tour and culminates with the ill-fated Altamont Free Concert, the Tracy festival marred by the stabbing death of a concertgoer at the hands of a Hells Angels member. It screens 8:45 p.m. Friday. Other films in the series include the reggae star Jimmy Cliff film “The Harder They Come” (July 27); a free outdoor screening of “Monterey Pop” (Aug. 8); David Bowie’s classic concert documentary “Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars” (Aug. 16) and Martin Scorsese’s brilliant “The Last Waltz” (Aug. 24). Details: Through Aug. 31; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; most screenings $9-$13; bampfa. org.