THURSDAY, FEB. 26
JAZZ
JACK WEST
Around the turn of the century Jack West was one of the most exciting acoustic guitarists on the West Coast music scene, an inventive composer and player in the band Curvature. The group’s sound evolved across several albums, but West’s playing was always wondrously distinctive, referencing jazz, folk and various international currents without ever adopting a particular idiom. And then he was gone. For nearly two decades West focused his inventiveness on the solar power industry. Now he’s gradually been dipping his toes back into performing and takes the full plunge at the Freight to celebrate the release of his first new album in 23 years, Guitars On Life. Disclosure: I wrote the album’s liner notes. – ANDREW GILBERT
INFO: Thu, 8pm, The Freight, 2020 Addison St., Berkeley. $39-$44. 510.644.2020.
THURSDAY, FEB. 26
INDIE
PINBACK
Formed in San Diego in 1998, Pinback began as a part-time studio experiment between multi-instrumentalists Rob Crow and Armistead Burwell Smith IV, and became one of the West Coast’s most intricate indie-rock projects. Their songs coil and unspool with mathematical rigor: interlocking basslines, elastic melodies and abstract, achy lyrics. They’re able to stretch their structures without sacrificing pop immediacy, delivering the pleasing pairing of brainy construction and hummable hooks. Onstage, that precision turns tactile: two musicians building interlocking patterns in real time. – SONYA BENNETT-BRANDT
INFO: Thu, 8pm, The UC Theatre, 2036 University Ave., Berkeley. $40. 510.356.4000.
FRIDAY, FEB. 27
JAZZ
A TRIBUTE TO JOHN MAYER’S ‘CONTINUUM’
Featuring Oakland vocalist Amy D and Hayward singer, songwriter and guitarist Ian Santillano, this project celebrates John Mayer’s Continuum, the 2006 album that marked his transformation from pop stylist to soul-inflected artist. D has been heard most frequently in recent years working with jazz drummer/vibraphonist Dillon Vado in their band Heart Matters, while Santillano is a folk-meets-funk songwriter who cites Mayer as one of his influences. Their first collaboration tackles Continuum track by track, reimagining one of their favorite albums via D’s affinity for jazz phrasing. They’re joined by pianist Carl Nash, bassist Chris Balderas and David Aguiar on drums and vocals. – AG
INFO: Fri, 7:30pm, The Sound Room, 3022 Broadway, Oakland. $35. 510.708.9691.
FRIDAY, FEB. 27
HIP-HOP
CLIPPING
Can hip-hop be cinematic? Yes, when it’s delivered by Clipping, with Tony- and Grammy Award-winning actor, rapper and writer Daveed Diggs; Jonathan Snipes; and William Hutson forming the trio. Lay down and submit to Clipping’s sci-fi/horror-based excursions pulled from their Hugo Award-winning or nominated albums. Is it rap, cyberpunk, poetry, a novel delivered in four minutes or less, or a verbal Nascar or Grand Prix? Doesn’t matter. Clipping is all that and more. The show overflows with additional talent: thinking-person’s L.A. rapper Open Mike Eagle, with songs that manage to be both futuristic and nostalgic, and Cooling Prongs. – LOU FANCHER
INFO: Fri, 8pm, The UC Theatre, 2036 University Ave., Berkeley. $30. 510.356.4000.
FRIDAY, FEB. 27
DANCE
YAA SAMAR! DANCE THEATRE
This weekend see the West Coast premier of Samar Haddad King’s new show, Gathering. Part stage work, part audience participation, Gathering follows one woman as she struggles to piece together her fragmented memories after her village is bombed on her wedding day. This powerful show tells the story through a variety of mediums such as song, dance, text and puppetry which the New York Times called “epic” and “intimate” during its 2024 debut. A Palestinian-American choreographer, King uses oranges in Gathering as an entry point to her culture to connect with the audience, as they are one of the fruits people can “divide individually without using a knife.” Goes through March 1. – MAT WEIR
INFO: Fri, 8pm, Cal Performances at Zellerbach Hall, 101 Zellerbach Hall, #4800, Berkeley. $69-$74. 510.642.9988.
SATURDAY, FEB. 28
MUSEUM
‘HAPPY HEAVENLY BIRTHDAY, OSCAR’
Feb. 28 marks the final day of the Black Panther Party Museum’s tribute to the late Oscar Grant, “Happy Heavenly Birthday, Oscar,” the exhibition featured for Black History Month. It honors the lives of Black and brown people who have died by police violence. Looking at Grant’s life and legacy through voice and images, it both remembers and celebrates his life, while asking visitors, “Have you ever wondered who Oscar Grant would have been today?” He died early on New Year’s Day, 2009, at the age of 22, leaving behind a 4-year-old daughter. – JANIS HASHE
INFO: Sat, 10am, Black Panther Party Museum, 1427 Broadway, Oakland. Free.
SATURDAY, FEB. 28
FOLK-PUNK
LARRY THE CABLE GUY BACKSHOTS
Folk-punk—communal, unpolished, built for basements—marries the scrappy urgency of punk to the bare-bones storytelling of folk. SoCal queer, folk-punk group Larry The Cable Guy Backshots push that template into gleeful overdrive. Their sets are fast, ragged and a little confrontational, with furious strumming and vocals that veer from sardonic sneer to full-throated howl and shouted gang vocals. The four-piece group skewers macho clichés and cultural absurdities with aplomb, then pivots into surprisingly candid confession. – SBB
INFO: Sat, 6:30pm, 924 Gilman St., Berkeley. $10-$12. 510.524.8180.
SATURDAY, FEB. 28
NEO SOUL
CHICO DEBARGE
When it comes to soul music, Chico DeBarge knows a thing or two. Originally part of the DeBarge family musical group, Chico set out on his own in the mid-1980s when he signed a deal with the premiere label in soul music, Motown Records. In 1986 he released his first solo hit single, the electrofunk classic, “Talk to Me,” which made it to No. 21 on the U.S. charts and No. 7 on the R&B charts. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s DeBarge continued dropping albums that climbed the charts with multiple hit singles like “Iggin’ Me,” “No Guarantee” and “Superman.” In 2017 he released a remastered version of his 2003 R&B album, Free. – MW
INFO: Sat, 7:30pm, Yoshi’s, 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland. $69-$99. 510.238.9200.
SUNDAY, MARCH 1
THEATER
‘LOOKING FOR JUSTICE’
Amy Oppenheimer is an activist, lesbian and feminist who became a lawyer and a judge in her pursuit to establish restorative justice as the norm. She devoted her work to representing people who had suffered domestic abuse and workplace sexual harassment. Even so, Oppenheimer wonders in this show about her role in supporting a white friend in 1970 who had been raped by a boyfriend who was Black—her friend sought restorative justice, not incarceration, for the offender. Fifty-six years later, the possibility of receiving justice in an unjust legal system and a world that undervalues humanity continues to rankle and ring louder than a high-decibel alarm. Goes until March 29. – LF
INFO: Sun, 5pm, The Marsh, Berkeley Cabaret and Theater, 2120 Allston Way, Berkeley. $25-$100. 415.282.3055.
MONDAY, MARCH 2
JAZZ
GOLDINGS/BERNSTEIN/STEWART ORGAN TRIO
The 1950s and ’60s may have been the heyday of organ trios, but Hammond organist Larry Goldings, jazz guitarist Peter Bernstein and drummer Bill Stewart have been putting their own twist on the genre since the mid-’90s. Goldings’ talents cover funk, pop and electronica as well as jazz, and he is also the composer/arranger of a number of the tunes the trio plays. They’ve recorded 14 albums in the more than 30 years they’ve played together, and evolution has occurred. Goldings joked in an interview with JazzTimes, “I have trouble hearing myself on our first record. I was using a vibrato that’s only used in circus music or Fellini films.” Now, they just swing. – JH
INFO: Mon, 7:30pm, Yoshi’s, 510 Embarcadero West, Oakland. $34-59. 510.238.9200.
