Best Bets: SF Ballet’s ‘Don Quixote,’ ‘Ocean Hoptimism,’ GG Park kids’ concert, organ with Oakland Symphony, Phillipe Jordan at SF Symphony

Dazzling “Don Q”: San Francisco Ballet is amid a run of “Don Quixote,” a show that dance lovers won’t want to miss. The full-length work based on Miguel de Cervantes’ classic 17th century novel about the adventures of a dreaming, bumbling nobleman (has anybody read it lately?) is a blast from start to finish. Based on original choreography by Alexander Gorsky and Marius Petipa with additions by Helgi Tomasson and Yuri Possokhov, and set to a bouncy score by Ludwig Minkus, this engaging “Don Q” has flying dancers and comic action, not to mention colorful swirling costumes, a set that captures sunny Spain and some real horses! Tuesday’s performance featured Nathaniel Remez in the title role and Pascal Molat as his sidekick Sancho Panza, and, best yet, Sasha De Sola and Joshua Jack Price, dazzling as lovers Kitri and Basilio, making the technically demanding choreography look easy. Also notable on Tuesday: Fernando Carratalá Coloma as matador Espada; Jasmine Jimison as his partner Mercedes; and Jihyun Choi and Seojeong Yun as Kitri’s pals. Martin West leads the always excellent orchestra; performances continue at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco through Sunday. Tickets are $65 to $575; rush tickets, $35 to $99, also may be available. Visit sfballet.org. 

Freebie of the week: Let’s clear up one thing now about the free monthly ocean-themed speaker series titled “Ocean Hoptimism.” “Hoptimism” does refer to the fact that locally brewed craft beers are quaffed during the presentations, but the working theme isn’t “Holy mackerel, the oceans are so messed up we have to drown ourselves in brewskies just to talk about it!” Audience members don’t even have to have a beer, though the event is held at a brewery. And furthermore, the theme of the gathering is positive: “While it’s easy to get lost in the doom and gloom of environmental challenges,” the group says on its website, “we choose a different approach – resilient optimism.” Presentations are about efforts being made to preserve the ocean environment, or people with a particular, even peculiar, attachment to the sea. On Thursday, the group welcomes Bay Area filmmaker, diver, researcher and storyteller Steve Peletz, who will discuss his short film “Lands End,” a look at a diehard group of swimmers who take on the 51-degree waters off the scenic Lands End park in northwest San Francisco. The gathering is at 7 p.m. Thursday at Faction Brewing, 2501 Monarch St., Alameda. We’d say the stunning scenery at the site is worth the price of admission, but there is no admission. More information is at www.oceanhoptimism.org. 

Another freebie: The Golden Gate Park Bandshell free concert season is up and running. The shows boast a fun, laid-back vibe that’s generally family-friendly, even if the performers are delivering tunes aimed at adults. This weekend, though, serves up Bay Area performers who have made it their mission to make kids dance and smile. Opening the Kids Festival concert at 10 a.m. Saturday is Charity and the JAMband, led by Charity Kahn, who says of her   music: “JAM is about making sounds and songs and hooting and hollering and belly laughing and shimmying and swaying and running and jumping and jiving and bouncing and breathing with people you love!” The bill also features Teacher Barb and Friends, fronted by Barbara Murphy, who grew up listening to her mother play classical piano and decided at an early age she wanted to perform music that makes people feel better. She honed her style during a trip to Ireland when she was 19, and a later stint at the Blue Bear School of Music in San Francisco. The free show runs 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Saturday at the bandshell; more information is at sfrecpark.org/1570/Golden-Gate-Bandshell-Concerts. 

An organ extravaganza: Both the Hammond B-3 organ, beloved by jazz and blues musicians everywhere, and the Paramount Theatre’s vintage 1931 “Mighty Wurlitzer,” designed to replicate the thunderous sounds of a full orchestra, will be rolled out for the Oakland Symphony’s penultimate season concert at 8 p.m. Friday in the theater on Broadway. Brian Raphael Nabors’ Hammond Concerto, which Oakland Symphony conductor Kedrick Armstrong, himself a B-3 musician, sought out specifically for this concert, will be performed by the composer. It’s a three-movement piece which begins with “Rhapsody, ” which Nabors describes as a history of the many forms of American music; then moves on to “Threnody,” which mourns the senseless violence and racial hatred that has afflicted our country; and concludes with “Finale,” which he calls “one large gospel break between the organ and the orchestra.” Also, Jeremy Lenk, music director and organist at the Mission Dolores Basilica in San Francisco, steps up to the Wurlitzer to perform Camille Saint-Saens’ 1886 Symphony No. 3, “Organ.” The concert opens with Clarice Assad’s “Baião N’ Blues” from 2023. Find tickets, $25-$92, at oaklandsymphony.org. 

A fantastic program: San Francisco Symphony patrons can decide this week which part of composer Hector Berlioz’s dramatic and groundbreaking “Symphonie fantastique” is more compelling: the concluding “Dream of a Witches’ Sabbath” fifth movement, with its shrieking E-flat clarinet playing a grotesque dance tune and its parody of the “Dies irae” funereal chant, or the preceding “March to the Scaffold” movement, a terrifying, relentless drive to the death that ends with the sound of a head rolling from the guillotine. Guest conductor Phillipe Jordan, music director of the Vienna State Opera, brings all that to life in concerts that open with the much more soothing “Prelude to the afternoon of a faun” by Claude Debussy, and continue with Camille Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 5, played by the brilliant French artist Jean-Yves Thibaudet as soloist. Performance times in San Francisco’s Davies Hall are Thursday at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Tickets, $30-$199, can be found at sfsymphony.org.