Saturday Matinee

Don’t you hate it when real life gets in the way of what you really want to do? It’s been particularly difficult to tear myself away from work and a semblance of a personal life these days. Throw in a family visit last weekend and a bridal shower this coming weekend, and things get nearly impossible. Anyways, some really good things are going on this week. If you attend any of these, please report back to tell me what I missed!!

1. San Francisco Symphony: MTT plays Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23: Do you think he calls himself MTT? I really wanted to go see this. A marvelous program at the symphony, continues through Saturday. The program includes a Stravinsky Octet for Wind Instruments, Mozart Piano Concerto No. 23 with Michael Tilson Thomas as the piano soloist, and Stravinsky’s Pulcinella with a fantastic line up of singers including Eric Owens, an amazing artist that stood out even in the standout cast in SF Opera’s Porgy and Bess last summer. This program might be a fun one to watch from the cheap center terrace seats – piano performances are good for these because you get a great view of the keyboard and MTT’s expressive actions. It might not be fun for the singers though, as they face forward. Read sfmike’s take on it, here.
2. San Francisco Ballet’s Swan Lake closes at the end of this week. My review from last year is here. I will be watching Sarah Van Patten on Saturday afternoon – she hit it out of the park last year in Pointe Magazine’s top 12 favorite performances of the year.
3. Christopher Wheeldon’s company Morphoses completes their West Coast tour this week with their last show in Santa Barbara on January 29. I’ll be reviewing them soon (hopefully tonight). The company and their repertoire is amazing and challenging – if you want to see the future of ballet, go see it. And for goodness sakes, don’t leave before the last piece, Wheeldon’s Rhapsody Fantasie, as a friend of mine did – it was my favorite piece of the program. I couldn’t help myself, but I saw him strolling in the lobby where nobody recognized him. In a supremely fangirl-y moment, I introduced myself and got to ask him a few questions (one was, “What does Continuum mean?”). I hope I wasn’t rude because I didn’t mean it that way at all, but he was equally nice and charming and so so intelligent, and I was thrilled to meet a choreographer I so admire. SFB principal Pierre-Francois Vilanoba was also spotted in the house.
4. Fiddler on the Roof with Harvey Fierstein opened this week.

I’m sure I’m missing a million events, but as I’m up to my neck in graduate work, these are the things that have been on my radar recently. What else am I missing out on?