Certainly one of my favorite string quartets, the Emerson – Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer, violins; Lawrence Dutton, viola; and Paul Watkins, cello – is coming to town. Under the auspices of the UCSD ArtPower! Chamber Music USA series, they play at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 23 at the Department of Music’s Conrad Prebys Concert Hall. The program comprises Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s String Quartet No. 14, Benjamin Britten’s String Quartet No. 2 and Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 15. A 7 p.m. ArtTalk at the adjacent Loft precedes the concert. Tickets are $36 to $54 at boxoffice.ucsd.edu, or phone (858) 534-8497. A bit farther off, but certainly worth putting on the calendar and making ticket purchase now, is the UCSD kallisti ensemble (founded by Prof. Susan Narucki in 2009) production of Kurt Weill’s “The Threepenny Opera,” to be presented at 7 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, May 6, 8 and 9 and 2 p.m. Sunday, May 10, at the Conrad Prebys Music Center’s Experimental Theater. Set in 2017, the production will be staged by esteemed San Diego director Ruff Yeager, recently named a participant in Lincoln Center’s Directors Lab. An adjunct professor at Southwestern College, Yeager staged kallisti’s recent and acclaimed world premiere production, “Cuatro Corridos.” Tickets for “The Threepenny Opera” are $15.50 at musicweb.ucsd.edu/concerts or (858) 534-3448. Choreographer John Malashock, a La Jolla native son and a graduate of La Jolla High School, returned to La Jolla in 1984 following 10 years of touring with Twyla Tharp. He tried entering the business sector but found himself “called back” into dance and founded Malashock Dance in 1988. Now based at Dance Place San Diego in Liberty Station, Malashock Dance and SACRA/PROFANA (the chorus in La Jolla Playhouse’s recent “Hunchback of Notre Dame”), in partnership with the UCSD Department of Theatre and Dance, will present a new eveninglong dance work titled “Snakeskin” at 7:30 p.m. Friday through Sunday, May 15 through 17 at UCSD’s Forum Theatre, 2910 La Jolla Village Drive. Music and lyrics are by composer Krishan Oberoi, director and founder of SACRA/PROFANA, and the choreography is by Malashock. Eight dancers and eight musicians portray all the characters in a mythic tale that presents inhabitants of a small Southern town who wrestle with bigotry, isolation, eroticism and narrowmindedness. Tickets are $35 at malashockdance.org. Sad to say that Broadway’s “Honeymoon in Vegas,” starring television star Tony Danza (“Taxi” and “Who’s the Boss?”) and Rob McClure (“Chaplin” at La Jolla Playhouse) did not catch up with its own splendid reviews and closed April 5. Yours truly is happy to have seen composer Jason Robert Brown’s joyous musical on a recent New York trip. San Diego Opera, amid its 50th anniversary year, celebrates with – what else? – the 50th Anniversary Celebration Concert. Be there at 7 p.m. Saturday, April 18, and 2 p.m. Sunday, April 19, at Copley Symphony Hall, 750 B St. downtown (the Padres are in Chicago, so you will find plenty of parking). Karen Kamensek will conduct favorite arias, duets, ensembles and choruses from the likes of “Aida,” “Candide,” “Turandot” and “Tosca,” among others, sung by the San Diego Opera Chorus and artists Lise Lindstrom, Marianne Cornetti, Emily Magee, Stephen Powell, René Barbera, Reinhard Hagen and Scott Sikon. Tickets are $45 and up and available at sdopera.com or (619) 533-7000. Pre- and post-concert events are an option.
