As California and the West Coast continues to burn, air quality is forecast to be very unhealthy for the entire weekend throughout the Bay Area, and experts advise residents to stay indoors with windows and doors closed and to minimize outdoor activity.

By now, staying indoors is nothing new for locals who’ve remained socially distant due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and several organizations in the North Bay are offering virtual versions of events ranging from readings to art exhibits to online auctions.

One such group is Marin Open Studios. For 27 years, Marin Open Studios has increased awareness of local artists through annual self-guided tours of the artists’ studios and galleries. This year’s pandemic canceled the tours this past May, though MOS has kept busy with online versions of their art tours. This week, MOS hosts a live-streaming art reception for “The Human Spirit,” the premiere exhibition in its new virtual gallery. This show, curated on the theme of portraying different aspects of the human spirit, features several participating Marin Open Studios artists, many of whom share their art and their stories on Saturday, Sept. 12, at 5pm. Free. Marinopenstudios2020.org.

For theater lovers, Transcendence Theatre Company has spent the summer reliving the best moments from it’s annual “Broadway Under the Stars” festival by presenting online showcases of the family friendly performances and song-and-dance shows that have been captured on video. Now, the company is pulling out all the virtual stops for the season-ending Annual Gala Musical Fundraiser, featuring never-before-seen footage of Broadway stars from smash hits such as “School of Rock,” and “Frozen” from the last eight seasons of “Broadway Under the Stars” performances. The virtual Gala’s video compilation of “the best of the best” musical performances runs Friday through Sunday, Sept. 11–13. Times vary. Free to watch, donations welcome. Transcendencetheatre.org.

In Napa Valley, The long-running Festival for Brain Health has raised nearly $500 million to build awareness for brain-related disorders and to develop new therapies. The event normally gathers at Staglin Family Vineyard in the Napa Valley, though due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it won’t be possible this summer to hold the event in-person. Instead, the significant brain health event is occurring virtually this year, with a daylong program featuring an online scientific symposium and Q&A with leaders in brain health, followed by an exclusive, live-stream concert by 10-time Grammy Award–winning musician Arturo Sandoval and his ensemble band on Saturday, Sept. 12. Registration required. Music-festival.org.

There are several chances for local literature this weekend as well, as local figures go online to read from very different kinds of books. First, Book Passage co-owner Bill Petrocelli argues that the Electoral College has lost its way in his new political book, “Electoral Bait & Switch.” Petrocelli engages with Constitutional law professor Joel Paul online Saturday, Sept. 12, at 4pm (Bookpassage.com). The next day, award-winning poet and recently retired Santa Rosa Junior College professor and clinical social worker Donna Emerson reads from her new poetry collection, “Beside the Well,” in Occidental Center for the Arts’ first virtual book launch via Zoom on Sunday, Sept. 13, at 4pm (Occidentalcenterforthearts.org).

North Bay residents looking to give back to beloved local cultural purveyors have a few online auctions that they can turn to, with fine art and at-home experiences available for bidding. First, the Sausalito Art Festival, which was forced to cancel its live event earlier this month, decided to do something to help artists financially. With that in mind, the 2020 Sausalito Art Festival Silent Auction is open now, featuring art from over 80 participating artistic masters in varied mediums. That auction will end Sunday, September 13 (Sausalitoartfestival.org). That same day, another online auction opens, as the Children’s Museum of Sonoma County invites patrons to dream big in the “Time to Wonder” online auction, running Sept. 13 to Sept. 22. This newly virtual auction features over 45 locally-sourced items such as at-home adventures and experiences, food and collectible wines, books and gourmet baskets. Additionally, participants can support the Fund-A-Need, which will be used to refurbish existing beloved exhibits and build new gems at the Children’s Museum (cmosc.org).

The Green Music Center–Sonoma State University’s world-class live music venue and educational centerpiece made up of the acoustically-pristine Weill Hall, the intimate Schroeder Hall and more¬–is accustomed to packing the halls with concerts and various live events featuring culturally significant musicians and other top-tier performers.

This year has been a quiet one at the Green Music Center, as the Covid-19 pandemic closed the halls and classrooms in March. After missing the summer season due to the extended social-distancing orders, the center in Rohnert Park is transforming their planned fall season into an online experience.

Dubbed ‘The Green Room,’ this new virtual program of events is inspired by the center’s green rooms, where performers hang out backstage, and ‘The Green Room’ events will feature conversations with artists as well as performances streaming online, beginning September 17 and running through December.

In addition to presenting online concerts featuring popular acts, The Green Room’s online fall programming reflects the Green Music Center’s commitment to student engagement with four artists-in-residence from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines who will also lead students in online discussions and workshops along with their scheduled shows.

The artists-in-residence performances begin with musician, performing artist and cultural Babalawo (spiritual guide) Michael Mwenso, who presents a ‘Black Music Series of talks and showcases starting September 17. The series opens with “A Form of Protest,” in which Mwenso examines music as a form of activism, and highlights the role it has played in pushing the boundaries on civil rights, human rights, class inequality and more through a discussion, historical recordings and performance.

Other artist-in-residence performers include Green Music Center favorites Las Cafeteras (pictured), who share their infectious genre-bending and lyrically-rich music and storytelling on October 15; visionary choreographer Liz Lerman, who returns to continue her new site-specific work “Wicked Bodies (Sonoma),” exploring the depictions of women’s bodies across multiple historic periods on November 5; and multicultural musical group and Navajo cultural music ambassadors DDAT, which performs on December 3.

‘The Green Room’ will also present three free online performances by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and concerts by multi-cultural artists like acoustic and electric guitarist JIJI, instrumental band Invoke and the Juilliard String Quartet.

Aside from ‘The Green Room’ online season, The Green Music Center will still be the performing location for its resident orchestra, The Santa Rosa Symphony; which will perform, record and stream its redesigned Fall 2020 concerts from the Green Music Center’s Weill Hall stage.

The “SRS @ Home Virtual Fall Concert Series” will be streamed live on YouTube on October 11, November 15 and December 13 at 3pm, and each concert will feature a socially-distanced subset of the orchestra and Music Director Francesco Lecce-Chong.

“In the face of the difficulties behind us and the struggles ahead, the Symphony will share uplifting musical experiences, as it has during past crises,” Lecce-Chong says. “This is truly a historic moment in our Symphony’s long history, and we are so excited to present our first concerts, specifically programmed, directed and filmed for you to enjoy in your homes. We may not be in the Green Music Center in person, but imagine that across our community, we will all be gathered for a performance.”

Get tickets and the full details on ‘The Green Room’ online season at gmc.sonoma.edu.

Find more information on the Santa Rosa Symphony’s upcoming virtual season at srsymphony.org.

Local writer, actor (and former Bohemian contributor) David Templeton found himself with plenty of free time during the North Bay’s ongoing shelter-in-place response to the Covid-19 pandemic these past six months.

In the time, he’s been flexing his memory muscle by memorizing all 3800 words of “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” the beloved seventh chapter from Kenneth Grahame’s seminal literary work, Wind in the Willows.

This Saturday, September 12, Templeton will share the exciting and mysterious tale in coordination with the Friends of the Petaluma River in a live, word-for-word performance of ‘The Piper at the Gates of Dawn’ that can be seen on Facebook, YouTube or the Friends’ website for free at 5:30pm.

Written over one hundred years ago, Wind in the Willows is one of the most beloved children’s novels on the last century, and it’s anthropomorphic animal characters like Mr. Toad have endured in Disney adaptations and other films and animated fare.

Yet, many children who grew up reading Wind in the Willows may be unaware of “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” which is often edited out of many modern adaptations.

The chapter features a story that seems unrelated to the rest of the novel’s plot. Otter has lost his son and Rat and Mole get in their boat and row through the night to look for him. Just before the dawn they hear incredible music and come face to face with a deity who is clearly (though never named) the Great God Pan, with the lost otter boy sleeping at his feet. Rat and Mole load the boy into the boat and take him back to his family recognizing that they have had an unusual experience.

While this chapter is less well known than the rest of the story, it is arguably the most celebrated, studied and beautiful chapter of the book, and critics and fans alike regularly point to “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” as Grahame’s best writing.

“‘The Piper at the Gates of Dawn’, filled with references to sleeping and dreaming and waking and drowsing, is, I think, all about awakening to beauty,” Templeton writes in a statement. “It’s about those transcendent moments when something jars us out of our habits and comforts and we suddenly see the world in a striking new way, then struggle to hold onto that vision as we return to our previous habits and comforts.”

For Templeton, memorizing “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” was a personal project during the early days of quarantine that he describes as, “A true joy and pleasure at a time when joy and pleasure sometimes seem in short supply.”

Following his performance on Sept. 12, Templeton will engage in a discussion of the work with writer, filmmaker (and current Bohemian editor) Daedalus Howell and Friends of the Petaluma River Executive Director Stephanie Bastianon to further revel in the story’s themes and reveal it’s significance.

The performance benefits Friends of the Petaluma River, which has celebrated and helped conserve the Petaluma River and it’s watershed through education and stewardship since 2005. The event is free to watch, and donations are welcome and donors will have the opportunity to win a Wind in the Willows-themed gift basket. For information on how to watch the performance, visit FriendsofthePetalumaRiver.org.

From the lawns of Rancho Olompali near Novato to the Cushing Memorial Amphitheatre situated among the peaks of Mount Tamalpais, Marin County has seen it all when it comes to rock & roll.

For more than 50 years, Marin has been the home of iconic rock artists and bands, as well as the scene of legendary concerts. Now, locals can revisit those moments as MarinMOCA opens a new exhibit, “Marin’s Rock Art Scene,” on Saturday, Sept. 12.

“One of our board members had a memory of Olompali; how important it was to the start of the whole rock culture in the Bay Area and how early it was, in 1966 before the Summer of Love in San Francisco,” says MarinMOCA Executive Director Nancy Rehkopf.

Starting there in 1966, “Marin’s Rock Art Scene” looks back on several musical figures who made Marin famous, and features photography of the Grateful Dead, Carlos Santana and others, taken by prolific rock photographers including Herb Greene and Jay Blakesberg; both of whom worked with MarinMOCA on this exhibit.

“We curated the show primarily through word of mouth,” Rehkopf says. “We learned that rock culture is still very much alive in Marin and the Bay Area.”

Along with photographers, MarinMOCA worked with musicians, producers and even collectors of memorabilia for the exhibit, which also includes vintage posters for fondly-remembered concerts such as Marin’s 1966 outdoor rock concert at Mt. Tam and the infamous “Skeleton and Rose” poster for Grateful Dead’s 1966 show at Avalon Ballroom drawn by beloved artists Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelly.

Musicians also get into the act for this exhibit, and “Marin’s Rock Art Scene” displays original artwork by artists like Dave Getz of Big Brother & the Holding Company and Joan Baez, whose oil paintings included in the exhibit include a portrait of her younger sister, Mimi Fariña.

Fariña was best known for founding and running nonprofit organization Bread & Roses, which offers free live music to isolated residents of homeless shelters, correction facilities, health care centers and convalescent homes in the Bay Area and beyond. For this exhibit, 20 percent of all art sales will be donated to Bread & Roses.

Alongside the art and images, MarinMOCA will also show the documentary, Olompali: A Hippie Odyssey, as part of the exhibit. Narrated by Peter Coyote, it tells the story of the Marin estate that became a commune and kicked off the rock scene by attracting figures like Joplin and the Grateful Dead in the ’60s.

The exhibit also follows the local scene’s trajectory beyond the ’60s and ’70s with photos and album art representing heavy-metal superstars Metallica, Platinum-selling punk band Green Day, and even ’90s hip-hop icon Tupac Shakur—who attended Tamalpais High School.

Shakur is honored in Ashleigh Sumner’s 2018 mixed media painting, “I See No Change.” The piece features the rapper posed among stenciled red roses, layers of newsprint and images of cloaked Ku Klux Klan members and uniformed police officers. The words “No one taking the Blame” repeats across the canvas, resonating with the ongoing movements against police brutality and racial inequality.

“Marin’s Rock Art Scene” will be open to view in-person at MarinMOCA by appointment beginning Sept. 12. While a slideshow of the art will be available online soon, Rehkopf invites art lovers and patrons to make appointments to safely view the work in the museum.

“It’s a very comfortable experience here at the museum,” Rehkopf says. “You will be in the gallery with a maximum of 10 people, all of our doors and windows are open, everybody’s wearing masks, people are very respectful of social distancing. I’d like to encourage people to go.”

‘Marin’s Rock Art Scene’ runs Saturday, Sept. 12, to Sunday, Nov. 8. MarinMOCA is located at 500 Palm Dr., Novato. Open by appointment only. 415.506.0137; marinmoca.org.

Located in the heart of Calistoga, Sofie Contemporary Arts is one of Napa Valley’s premier purveyor of inventive modern art that is diverse in media, styles and approaches.

The gallery is run by director Jan Sofie and manager Scott Sofie. Since opening the gallery in 2017, the couple have endured fires, mass evacuations, and more recently a Covid-19 pandemic that closed their space for the past six months.

Still, Jan and Scott Sofie remain hopeful, and they share that feeling with the community as Sofie Contemporary Arts reopens this month with a new exhibit entitled “Hope Is the Thing…” The show is running now and remains on display through October.

The invitational group show’s theme is inspired by Emily Dickinson’s 1862 poem, “Hope Is The Thing With Feathers,” in which Dickinson describes the capacity for hope in metaphor as a bird that “perches in the soul.”

That hopeful feeling is illustrated in the exhibit’s diverse art from more than 20 accomplished Bay Area artists, including many North Bay favorites.

“While talking with many artists over the past difficult months, it became obvious that we were all trying to keep focused on what we really cared about, what really mattered,” Jan Sofie says in a statement.

For this exhibit, many of the participating artists are displaying works that focus on what is personally relevant for them, and selections in the show hit on topics of the pandemic and social distancing as well as economic turmoil and environmental concerns.

Participating artist Sylvia Gonzalez creates natural scenes such as her piece “Goldfinches” (pictured) from pencil and pastel drawn over monotype backgrounds. Working from her studio in Petaluma, Gonzalez focuses her layered art not only on birds, but on foxes, coyotes and other wildlife that can be found in the North Bay.

San Rafael artist Bill Russell also uses birds as an artistic metaphor in his contribution to the exhibit. His acrylic piece, “Little Birdies,” features several feathered figures in a colorful collage of movement.

Napa Valley artist Anne Pentland’s piece in the show is also a nature scene, though Pentland finds hope among ashes in her oil painting, “Aftermath Australia.” The art finds several kangaroos in a burned landscape being helped by a woman in yellow. The piece is from Pentland’s ongoing ‘Madonna’ Series, which employs the religious symbol of protection to represent Pentland’s passion for nature and her concern over climate change and its effects on wildlife.

In addition to works that feature animals, plants and other natural wonders that act as essential sources of solace, the exhibit includes works that evoke notable historical and culturally significant figures and references that aim to bolster resolve as well as hope.

“Without hope, I don’t think we can muster the courage or grit to change or go forward with what we need to do,” Sofie says. “There is always intelligence and light even in the most discouraging moments but it takes critical awareness and discipline to manifest it; I think you will see this in the exhibition.”

Sofie Contemporary Arts is located at 1407 Lincoln Ave., Calistoga. Open Wednesday through Sunday, Noon to 6pm or by arrangement. 707.942.4231.