Freebie of the week: The city of Concord has a mural renaissance going on and visitors are invited to join the celebration. Since 2022, the city has seen a dozen new murals in the neighborhood around Todos Santos Plaza, a downtown hotspot that’s home to a lively weekly farmer’s market and the free summer Thursday night Music & Market concert series. Overseen by Creative Concord, the murals project adds a chapter this weekend with the unveiling of six new works during the two-day Art & Music Jam. The festival features some 16 artists, most from the East Bay, creating new works live at the event, plus live music from Colombian-born singer Chika Di, R&B-electronica band The Seshen, reggae-island music outfit Paper Kayak and more. With festivities being in one of Concord’s liveliest commercial areas, there will be plenty to eat and drink on hand. The event runs from noon to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Todos Santos Plaza, Willow Pass Road and Grant Street. Admission is free. More information is at www.creativeconcordca.com.
Dancing to another freebie: We still love sneak-peek previews of upcoming attractions at the movie theater. Even though film trailers are available on YouTube and other internet sites (and even though so many these days seem to give away entirely too much about the film in question), they still feel special in the movie theater, enticing us with what the magic Hollywood is set to deliver. New Ballet in San Jose is looking to generate the same excitement this weekend with its annual free performance previewing the company’s upcoming season. It includes snippets of the “San Jose Nutcracker” (Dec. 14-23), an adaptation of the holiday classic that works in some fun Silicon Valley references; cutting-edge new dances in a production titled “Fast Forward” (March 21-22); and what promises to be an evocative take on a classic, “Swan Lake” (May 17-18) backed by the New Ballet Orchestra. The preview, at 6 p.m. Friday at the San Jose Museum of Art, is part of the museum’s Free First Friday event series. The show is free, but organizers advise getting tickets nonetheless. Go to sjmusart.org.
Celebrating Africa: These are exciting times for Cheza Nami, the Bay Area nonprofit that helps schools and other institutions develop programs and activities that promote cultural diversity and awareness. For one, the Pleasanton organization’s founder and director, Ciiku Ndung’u-Case, recently published her first book, “Wanjiku: Child of Mine,” inspired by her vivid memories of growing up in Kenya, where she experienced family life on a rural farm and urban life attending school in bustling Nairobi. Meanwhile, Cheza Nami this weekend is hosting its 12th annual Taste of Africa festival in Livermore. The event, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday in the Plaza Lawn area outside the Bankhead Theater in Livermore, features performances by more than a dozen dance and music groups, including the Afro-Brazilian music group Ilê Aiyê, the Diamano Coura West African dance troupe, the Sudanese musical group Mokili Wa, and many more. Also on hand will be a wide variety of vendors selling African art, food and other products. And if that’s not enough, there will be educational displays and drumming and dance workshops. Admission to the event is free; go to https://chezanami.org.
A double whammy: Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen has lined up a powerhouse program of two works for this weekend’s San Francisco Symphony concerts in Davies Hall. Dmitri Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1, which the composer hid in a drawer for seven years, finally permitting its premiere in 1955 two years after his persecutor Joseph Stalin was dead, has been called one of the most powerful pieces of music ever composed. It’s unusual for many reasons, including that it has a fourth concluding movement, an explosive dance of a burlesque. Native Japanese violinist Sayaka Shoji, a Paganini Competition winner, will give it her interpretation. The program also offers Johannes Brahms’ mighty Symphony No. 4, his last and many say his greatest, a tragedy-tinged work in E-minor that also has an astonishing fourth movement: a thundering passacaglia with an eight-bar theme lifted from a Bach cantata that repeats 30 times after its dramatic opening statement. Performance times are 7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday. Find tickets, $49-$179, at sfsymphony.org or by calling (415) 864-6000.
A passion for the piano: The Steinway Society once again plays host to the great Ukrainian pianist Anna Fedorova, winner of both the Rubinstein and Moscow International Chopin competitions, who, if her publicists can be believed, has been seen playing the Rachmaninoff Second live on YouTube more than 35 million times, making it the most-viewed classical concerto on that platform. We won’t be hearing her do the Rach at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at the Visual and Performing Arts Center in Cupertino’s De Anza College, but her program is impressive. She’ll open with Ravel’s “Gaspard de la nuit,” following with Scriabin’s “Black Mass” Sonata No. 9 before moving on to the piano suite culled from Manuel de Falla’s “El amor brujo.” The entire post-intermission will be Modest Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.” Tickets, $50-$75, are available at steinwaysociety.com or (408) 300-5635, or $25 for livestreaming, with 48 hours of listening time.
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