What's up this week: A multimedia choral premiere, violin and sax improv jazz, 4/20 with renowned poet and more

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Composer Freida Abtan will be on hand for the Peninsula Women’s Chorus’ world premiere performance of her multimedia work “The sound of grief.” Courtesy Caroline Hayeur / Agence Stock Photo.com.

‘Transcendence Surrounds’
There have been many tellings of the Orpheus myth, but composer Freida Abtan offers an innovative new spin on it with her multimedia opera for chorus and video, “The sound of grief.” The Peninsula Women’s Chorus commissioned the piece from composer-in-residence Abtan, and the work has its world premiere as the centerpiece of the chorus’ “Transcendence Surrounds” program. Among other works featured will be Betsey Biggs’ “MELT,” for chorus and video, which tells the story of the movement of glaciers, and Gustav Holst’s “Hymns to the Rig Veda,” drawn from translations of Vedic Sanskrit texts. Performances take place at Meet the Eye Studios in San Carlos, and have a limited audience size of 60 people per show. The chorus also offers a livestream performance on April 18. Each performance features a pre-concert talk and will be followed by a reception.

April 17, 7:30 p.m.; April 18, 4 p.m. (in person and livestream) and April 19, 4 p.m., at Meet the Eye Studios, San Carlos; tickets are $50 general/$10 young audiences/livestream is pay-what-you-wish. pwchorus.org/concert/spring2026.

Mads Tolling and Larry Ochs
Grammy Award-winning musician Mads Tolling conjures many genres from his violin. Bay Area audiences may have seen Tolling performing solo or in one of his projects, including Mads Tolling and the Mads Men, which plays 1960s jazz, soul, R&B and pop, in a recent collaboration with Melvin Seals, known for his work with the Jerry Garcia Band, or in an occasional classical performance as well. For this show presented by Earthwise Productions, Tolling teams for the first time with saxophoinist Larry Ochs, a master improviser and founder of the Rova saxophone quartet, which has toured and recorded extensively in the almost 50 years since its founding. To make the evening truly unique, Tolling and Ochs will be joined by cellists Ben Davis and Fred Lonberg-Holm.

April 17, 8-10 p.m., at Palo Alto Art Center, 1313 Newell Road, Palo Alto; $20; eventbrite.com.

‘Come From Away’
The world has changed a lot in 25 years, but acts of kindness and compassion from recent history seem to resonate even more nowadays. TheatreWorks closes its season with “Come From Away,” a musical inspired by a tiny town’s huge welcome to a whole lot of unexpected visitors. Following the 9/11 attacks, both U.S. and Canadian airspace closed for nearly a week, stranding flights carrying nearly 7,000 passengers in Gander, a small town in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The new arrivals more than doubled the town’s population, but the people of Gander rose to the challenge of housing and feeding the passengers. Irene Sankoff and David Hein based “Come From Away” on real Gander residents and travelers. TheatreWorks Artistic Director Emeritus Robert Kelley directs the show.

Through May 10 at the Mountain View Center for Performing Arts, 500 Castro St., Mountain View; $34-$115; theatreworks.org/mainstage/season-55.

MOAH’s School of Rock
Get your first taste of outdoor concert season with a spring evening concert in the garden at the Museum of American Heritage. Hear pop and rock from the KLA Jammers — a group formed by colleagues from the KLA Corporation who began jamming together as a creative outlet. The evening also features classic and modern rock, pop hits and originals from Coconut Hint, a six-piece Bay Area band.

April 18, 4-6 p.m., at the Museum of American Heritage, 351 Homer Ave., Palo Alto; free; moah.org.

Willis Barnstone with Effie Zilch
Feldman’s Books celebrates 4/20 with music and poetry, in a special event that brings together respected poet, translator and religious scholar Willis Barnstone with a performance by Peninsula roots rockers Effie Zilch — Feldman’s house band, as an event description notes. Now 98 years old, Barnstone is known for his English translations of authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, Rainer Maria Rilke, Antonio Machado and Wang Wei, as well as the ancient words of Sappho and Heraclitus. Feldman’s event will focus on his work from “African Bestiary,” his 2025 book of poems and paintings paying homage to the endangered animals of the African continent, and as his translations of Sappho and Sonnets to Orpheus. Copies of Barnstone’s books will be available for purchase.

April 20, 7:30 p.m., at Feldman’s Books, 1075 Curtis St., Menlo Park; $25 suggested donation; eventbrite.com.