GET OUT
Christine Davis compiles best bets for family fun, festivals, comedy and more. Send events submissions to eventsbestbets@oregonian.com.
Jonathan Ley
Moonviewing Festival
Celebrate autumn and the full moon rising Japanese style, on a lantern-lit walk at the O-Tsukimi festival.
7-9:30 p.m. Friday-Sunday, Sept. 13-15; Portland Japanese Garden, 611 S.W. Kingston Ave.; $40- $55; japanesegarden.org
Mark Graves, The Oregonian
Rose City Comic Con
For family-friendly fun, this pop-culture event focuses on comics, but also offers access to gaming, sci-fi, cosplay, anime and fantasy as well as the Rose City Jr. area for kids.
1-8 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 13-15; Oregon Convention Center, 777 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.; $35-$45 for single-day passes; rosecitycomiccon.com
Courtesy of David Becker
Shrewsbury Renaissance Faire
Come be thee blithe and merry with a cast of characters that includes Elizabethan minstrels, artisans, troubadours, jousters and bards.
10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, Sept. 14-15; Grant Road just off Oregon 223, Kings Valley, west of Albany; $7-$24; shrewfaire.com
How Did This Get Made – Live
Laugh along with actors Jason Mantzoukas, June Diane Raphael and Paul Scheer, as they tell cinematic horror stories about movies they love to hate in their award-winning podcast, “How Did This Get Made.”
7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 14; Keller Auditorium, 222 Clay St.; $35.- $75; portland5.com
Photo by Paco Lara
El Grito de Independencia
Join this celebration of Mexico’s independence from Spain with folkloric and Aztec dancers, traditional food and drink, live mariachi, salsa, cumbia and pop music, vendors and community booths.
2-10 p.m. Saturday, 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 14-15; Rose Quarter Commons, 1 N. Center Court St.; free; rosequarter.com
Oregonian file photo
Take time to smell the roses
See some of the City of Roses' best blooms on display at the Portland Rose Society's Fall Rose Show.
Noon to 8 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 14-15; Lloyd Center, second floor near Ulta Beauty; free; portlandrosesociety.org
handout photo
Aquifer Adventure
A Portland Water Bureau and the Columbia Slough Watershed Council event, Aquifer Adventure will have a treasure hunt, face painting, and the chance to build aquifers out of ice cream and cookies. There’s hiking and a canoe tour, too.
Noon-4 p.m., Saturday, Sept 14; Portland Water Bureau Launch, N.E. 16650 N.E. Airport Way; free; columbiaslough.org
photo by eclipse Production Studios Graphics Department
Secrets & Illusions
In his new stage show, illusionist Ivan Amodei, winner of Penn & Teller Fool Us, takes his audience on an epic journey to discover the secrets of life in the magical setting of the Louvre.
7:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 14;Newmark Theatre, 1111 S.W. Broadway Ave.; $45-$85; portland5.com
photo by Tania Flint
Car Show
Take a trip down Memory Lane in Downtown Oregon City, with a bumper-to-bumper display of classic cars, trucks and motorcycles of all types, makes and models.
8 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 14;1000 Main St., Oregon City; free; https://www.facebook.com/events/705407609820081/
Jim Ryan/Staff
Miniature air show
Join the remote control pilots of OMAS as they take their crafts through ariel twists and turns. Watch pint-sized aerobatic planes, helicopters, warbirds and even jets.
10 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, Sept. Sept. 14–15; Oregon Miniature Aircraft Squadron Flying Field, 46100 N.W. Strohmayer Road, Forest Grove; $8 parking fee; omas-rc.org/wp/
Oregon Independent Film Festival
The Oregon Independent Film Festival, back for its eighth year, will screen roughly 75 independent films from here and abroad, choosing the best and most innovative.
Various times Sept. 18-25; Main venues: Clinton Street Theater, 2522 S.E. Clinton St., Portland, and the Broadway Metro Cinemas, 43 W. Broadway, Eugene; $10-$18 for screenings; oregonindependentfilmfest.com
CONCERT GUIDE
Nathan Rizzo puts together seasonal, monthly and weekly concert guides. Email submissions at least 4 weeks ahead of the event to musicbestbets@oregonian.com.
Gary Clark Jr.
There are lighter sides to Gary Clark Jr. But on “This Land,” the Austin singer-songwriter is unsparing — and politically clairvoyant. “Go back where you come from / we don’t want your kind,” Clark calls out in the album’s title track. An expletive catalyzes his response: “I’m America’s son/ This is where I come from.”
6 p.m. Friday, Sept. 13, McMenamins Edgefield. All ages. Tickets: Sold out - try resellers. edgefieldconcerts.com
An Evening with Mark Knopfler & Band
Mark Knopfler can turn up in surprising places: onstage at the Ryman with Emmylou Harris, the fine print of Bob Dylan’s “Infidels” and “The Princess Bride” composer’s chair. Yet each is affected with the slow-boiling narrative and closeness of “Brothers In Arms;” 35 years later the knot of Knopfler’s career threads.
8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 13, Keller Auditorium. All ages. Tickets: $72-$102. portland5.com
Ghost
Is Ghost the new Kiss? Not yet — but Ghost is the more talented band. Sewing dark mystery into the theater of ’70s and early ’80s metal, frontman Tobias Forge has realized some of today’s best rock music, recalling an epoch when heavier acts embraced melodicism — and didn’t take themselves too seriously.
7:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 16, Moda Center Theater of the Clouds. All ages. Tickets: $26-$144. rosequarter.com
Brian Wilson & The Zombies
When the time comes, “Pet Sounds” will be Brian Wilson’s testimony before St. Peter. But there is more to the oeuvre than that narrow window to God he reached in 1966: “Surfs Up” and “Friends,” foci of Wilson’s “Something Great in ‘68” tour, wear a rangier Beach Boys influence, the latter album a platform for drummer Dennis Wilson’s inchoate compositional aspirations. Both records should pair finely with the sumptuous melodicism of The Zombies’ “Odyssey and Oracle,” another of 1968’s clandestine pop landmarks.
8 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 17, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. All ages. $69.50-$139.50. portland5.com
THE ARTS
Arts editor Amy Wang compiles theater, classical music and visual arts events. Email submissions to fineartsbestbets@oregonian.com
Er-Gene Kahng performing Florence Price's Violin Concerto No. 2.
Portland Columbia Symphony
The symphony opens its season with a program featuring one of the most buzzed-about classical compositions in recent years: Florence Price's Violin Concerto No. 2. The manuscript was found a half-century after the 1952 death of Price, considered the first African American female composer. Arkansas Philharmonic concertmaster Er-Gene Kahng, who gave the concerto its world premiere, will perform it. Also on the program: Rossini's William Tell Overture and Brahms' First Symphony. 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 13, First United Methodist Church, 1838 S.W. Jefferson St., Portland; 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 15, Mt. Hood Community College theater, 26000 S.E. Stark St., Gresham. $10-$35, columbiasymphony.org or 503-234-4077.
“Susan”
This show, presented as part of the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art's 2019 Time-Based Art festival, combines music and stand-up to tell the stories of Seattle writer-musician-comedian Ahamefule J. Oluo and his mother, Susan Hawley, whose father and husband one day went back to his native Nigeria and never returned. As the title suggests, this is an ode to a woman whose love for her children kept her going through numerous hardships. 6:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday, Sept. 13-14, Winningstad Theatre, 1111 S.W. Broadway. $25, pica.org or 503-242-1419.
Darth Vader beckons to his nemesis Luke Skywalker in a scene from "The Empire Strikes Back." (Lucasfilm)
“Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back in Concert”
Enjoy the second installment – or the fifth, depending on how you're counting – of George Lucas' cinematic space epic with the Oregon Symphony performing John Williams' rousing, Grammy Award-winning score live. Norman Huynh conducts. 7:30 p.m. Friday-Saturday, Sept. 13-14, 2 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 15, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 S.W. Broadway. Tickets start at $35, orsymphony.org or 503-228-1353.
BodyVox artistic director Jamey Hampton in rehearsal. (Torsten Kjellstrand)
BodyVox at Big Creek
Portland dance company BodyVox performs in Hampton Lumber's Big Creek Forest, outside Astoria, in a concert benefiting dance education in Clatsop County. Yes, that's Hampton as in Jamey Hampton, co-founder and co-artistic director of BodyVox, whose grandfather founded the lumber company. Attendees must take shuttle buses to the performance; the roughly 20-minute ride includes logging roads. Shuttles depart 4-5:30 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 14, from Knappa High School, 41535 Old Highway 30, Astoria; performance starts at 6 p.m. $20, brownpapertickets.com.
Lynne Marie Stewart in Fake Radio's 2015 show "It's a Wonderful Life." Stewart returns for “The Maltese Falcon.” (Jason Lawrence)
“The Maltese Falcon”
Fake Radio presents a live radio theater retelling of the original 1943 broadcast of this story, drawing from Dashiell Hammett's original short story and the 1941 film starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor. Lynne Marie Stewart, most recently of the "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" sitcom cast, makes a guest appearance. 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 14, The Old Church, 1422 S.W. 11th Ave., Portland; 8 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 15, The Vault, 350 E. Main St., Hillsboro. $20-$30, fakeradio.net.
Shelley B. Shelley, seen here in Dominique Morisseau's "Skeleton Crew" at Artists Repertory Theatre, will perform one of the monologues in "Here on This Bridge: The -Ism Project." (David Kinder)
“Here on This Bridge: The -Ism Project”
Theatre Diaspora, Portland's Asian Pacific American theater company, presents another performance of its latest project, a collection of monologues on race, gender, orientation and nationality by Pacific Northwesterners. This show features Shelley B. Shelley, Larry Toda and Yolanda Porter performing monologues by Bonnie Ratner and Roberta Hunte, Dmae Roberts, and Yasmin Ruvalcaba. 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 19, The Vault, 350 E. Main St., Hillsboro. Pay what you will.
Jesse Narens, “Falling, Growing; Crawling, Knowing,” from the exhibit “Not Ours Alone” at Elisabeth Jones Art Center.
Elisabeth Jones Art Center
Two new exhibits at this Pearl District gallery zoom in on the fraught relationship between humanity and nature. In the group show "Not Ours Alone," artists Claire Duncan, Craig Goodworth, Polly Hughes, Jesse Narens, Catherine Ospovat, Esther Traugot and Heidi Wickham offer work ranging from pensive to perturbed in a variety of mediums. Meanwhile, painters from the EJArt CoLAB present "Be Kind to the Bees," a dance floor and mural that focuses on the issue of colony collapse. On view, noon-5 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday, through Oct. 27, Elisabeth Jones Art Center, 516 N.W. 14th Ave. Free.
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