Freebie of the week: While so much of today’s entertainment is on phones, tablets and other screens, it’s great to be able to rely on the good-old-fashioned circus for live fun and thrills. Folks in the Bay Area should be especially thankful for Circus Bella, which happens to be both very good at what it does as well as free! The performance troupe was founded 19 years ago by David Hunt and Abigail Munn as something of a 21st-century answer to iconic Bay Area troupes such as the Pickle Family Circus. Though Circus Bella offers a more compact production than Cirque du Soleil or Ringling Brothers, its talented jugglers, aerialists and acrobats – not to mention clowns – make magic doing their thing. The troupe, amid its annual summer tour of free shows, appears three times in “Ah Ha!” written and directed by Munn, this weekend at the Great Lawn at Yerba Buena Gardens, on Mission Street between Third and Fourth streets in San Francisco. Performances are noon on Friday and noon and 2:15 p.m. Saturday. The shows are part of the all-free Yerba Buena Gardens Festival that runs into October. Other upcoming Circus Bella shows include July 4 at Burgess Park in Menlo Park and July 9 at Lincoln Square Park in Oakland. More information is at www.circusbella.org or ybgfestival.org.
Fountain of blues: While the Artful Observer might suggest that blues music—electric and/or acoustic —in and of itself is a terrific form of entertainment, if someone insists on adding world-class brews, tasty delicacies and arts and crafts, it wouldn’t be hard to object. That’s the case with one of San Jose’s favorite events, the Fountain Blues and Brews Festival, which returns this weekend to Plaza de Cesar Chavez. Performers include Eric Gales, the guitarist and onetime child prodigy who received a much-deserved boost from the blues-and-blood infused film “Sinners”; Chicago stalwart Ronnie Baker Brooks; revered vocalist Ruthie Foster; and a Blues Explosion showcase featuring the Bay Area’s own Dynamic Miss Faye Carol and Fillmore Slim along with Lady Bianca, Alvon Johnson and more. True to the event’s title, there will be a wide selection of beers, wine and non-alcoholic drinks to sip, plenty of barbecue and other culinary offers, arts and crafts vendors, an instrument petting zoo and other fun stuff. The event runs from noon to 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Plaza de Cesar Chavez in downtown San Jose. Tickets and ticket packages run from $30-$200 at fountainblues.com.
You gotta have Faith: The Grammy-winning Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir, known for its rich and passionate performances, brings its Juneteenth show to the Bankhead Theater in Livermore this weekend. Led by dynamic music director Terrance Kelly, the singers promise “a high-energy, spirit-lifting performance” of black gospel and spiritual music. OIGC, celebrating its 40th anniversary, has delivered hundreds of raise-the-rafters concerts jammed with artists ranging from MC Hammer to Linda Ronstadt to The Muppets. It’s also earned a variety of music honors and been the subject of an acclaimed 2018 documentary titled “One Voice.” The Bankhead show is at 8 p.m. Saturday; tickets are $35 at livermorearts.org. The group also appears as the opening act for Tower of Power on July 2 at the Alameda County Fair in Pleasanton. The concert starts at 8 p.m.; tickets are $48.50, not including fair admission. Go to annual.alamedacountyfair.com.
Last chance: The word is out: San Francisco Opera’s current production of Richard Strauss’ thundering masterpiece “Elektra,” based on the ancient Greek myth of human sacrifice, murder and bloody revenge, is indeed electrifying. That word and “incendiary” both pop up in the reviews, and there remains only one more chance to enjoy (or endure) the hair-raising experience. The final performance of this revival of the acclaimed Keith Warner staging, which sets the action in a contemporary museum where the title character has been trapped, takes place at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at War Memorial Opera House. It stars Russian soprano Elena Pankratova in her San Francisco Opera debut, singing the demanding role she has excelled in many times before on stages all over Europe. Soprano Elza van den Heever stars as Elektra’s sister Chrysothemis; Michaela Schuster is their mother Klytemnestra, guilty of conspiring to put their sibling Iphigenia to death; and bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen is their brother Orest, architect of the final avenging act. Music director Eun Sun Kim leads the huge complement of musicians, an orchestral assemblage that required an expansion of the pit when the opera was first performed here in 1938. Find tickets, $29-$447, at sfopeera.com.
All the pipes pumping: San Francisco Symphony’s mighty Ruffatti organ, 8,264 pipes strong, takes the metaphoric center stage this weekend as guest conductor Stéphane Denève, music director of the St. Louis Symphony, leads our Bay Area orchestra through two pieces composed for the instrument. After opening the concerts with the first SF Symphony performances of Guillaume Connesson’s 2012 work “Flammenschrift,” Denève delves into c’s 1938 Organ Concerto, with Olivier Latry on the bench as guest soloist. Also on the program is Camille Saint-Saëns’ Symphony No. 3, “Organ,” which was a huge hit when it premiered with the composer conducting it himself in 1886. Performance times are 2 p.m. Thursday and 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Tickets, $30-$189, are available at sfsymphony.org.