Openers Salvant brings fairy tales to life
Classical picks: Fairy tales; last call for Tilson Thomas and Mahler
Here are four events for the weekend that classical music lovers won’t want to miss. Gold Coast goes global: Classical music has always drawn from folk themes, and today’s composers continue to mine a rich vein of worldwide sources. This weekend, the Gold Coast Chamber Players welcome New York’s Aizuri Quartet in a program that includes Rhiannon Giddens’ “At the Purchaser’s Option,” Lembit Beecher’s tribute to his Estonian grandmother, titled “These Memories May Be True,” and Armenian folk songs by Komitas — aka Komitas Vardapet, who, in the darkest moments of Armenian history, wrote music that expressed the hopes and dreams of his beleaguered nation. Works by Dvorak and Sibelius complete the program. Details: 7:30 p.m. Saturday; Don Tatzin Hall, Lafayette; $15-$45; 925-283-3728, www.gccpmusic.com. Left Coast’s “Fairytale Pieces”: Another folk-inspired thread runs through the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble’s latest program, which features Robert Schumann’s “Fairytale Pieces” for Viola and Piano. The concert also includes the world premiere of Carl Schimmel’s “Ladle Rat Rotten Hut,” a 21st-century take on Little Red Riding Hood; and Chris Castro’s “Coyote Goes to the Sky” and “Birds of a Feather,” with guest storyteller Susan Strauss. Details: 7:30 p.m. Sunday at Berkeley Hillside Club, 7:30 p.m. Monday at San Francisco Conservatory of Music; $18-$35; 415-617-5223, www.leftcoastensemble.org. Opera in the Pocket: It’s been a Bay Area tradition for more than four decades: San Francisco-based Pocket Opera has excelled in presenting chamber performances narrated in English by its founder and artistic director emeritus, Donald Pippin. This month, the company is presenting “Don Giovanni,” with baritone Anders Froehlich in the title role of Mozart’s dark-hued masterwork; the production, which opened last weekend at the Hillside Club, also includes Rabihah Davis Dunn as Donna Anna, Jaime Korkos as Donna Elvira, Spencer Dodd as Leporello and Sara LeMesh — the star of West Edge Opera’s sublime “Breaking the Waves” last summer — as Zerlina. Details: 2 p.m. Sunday at Legion of Honor, San Francisco; 5 p.m. March 15 at Oshman Family JCC, Palo Alto; $25-$55; 415-972-8930, www.pocketopera.org. Mahler at Davies: One of the pieces Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony will take on their upcoming 2020 European tour is Mahler’s Symphony No. 6, the first work the music director and his orchestra recorded to launch the symphony’s award-winning SFS Media label. In the waning days of MTT’s final season with the symphony, he’ll return to the score Friday for one more performance in Davies Symphony Hall. Details: 8 p.m.; $185-$350; 415-864-6000; www.sfsymphony.org. — Georgia Rowe, Correspondent Haitian/French-American vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant’s formidable creative ambitions have been evident ever since she burst onto the scene with her 2010 triumph at the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition. But the scope and vision of her latest project, “Ogresse,” is still something of a shock. SFJazz presents the Bay Area premiere of the evening-length program Wednesday at Oakland’s Paramount Theatre, followed by a Stanford Live performance March 13 at Bing Concert Hall. More than a song cycle, “Ogresse” is an earthy jazz operetta that tells the fairytale-like story of a black giantess and the humans who cross her path (and dinner plate). Salvant worked closely with the brilliant orchestrator Darcy James Argue, who arranged her songs and conducts an unusual 13-piece chamber ensemble featuring stellar jazz artists and the Mivos Quartet. Salvant says her most intense childhood encounters with the otherworldly came courtesy of her older sister. “She’d tell me these dark and gloomy stories using different voices for characters,” Salvant says. “She had this bit when we were hanging out in the pool where she’d whip her long flowing hair over her face and turn into a witch. I believed it.” Details: 8p.m. Wednesday at Paramount Theatre, Oakland; $55-$125; 866-9205299, www.sfjazz.org; 7:30p.m. March 13 at Bing Concert Hall, Stanford University; $30-$86; 650-724-2464, live.stanford. edu.