The New Jersey punk indie rock band Titus Andronicus released its fourth album, “The Most Lamentable Tragedy” –  a 93-minute, five-act rock opera –  in July.

The band’s first album, “The Airing of Grievances,” came out on 2008. Since then, the band has had wide exposure, including TV appearances on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” and “Last Call with Carson Daly.” Their song “Titus Andronicus” was used on the series “Elementary,” and their “Titus Andronicus Forever” was featured on the TV series “Bored to Death” and the film “Premium Rush.

The band plays Wednesday, Sept. 30, at the Phoenix, with Spider Bags and Baked opening. The doors open at 7:30 p.m. and the music starts at 8 p.m.

Singer and Songwriter Conor Oberst, best-known as front man for the band Bright Eyes, will perform with guitarist M. Ward, of She & Him, on Thursday, Oct. 1 at The Phoenix. The two have collaborted before as part of the supergroup Monsters of Folk.

The show opens with the Felice Brothers at 8 p.m. Tickets cost $30.

The Phoenix is at 201 Washington St. in Petaluma. Information: 762-3565, thephoenixtheater.com.

You can reach staff writer Dan Taylor at 521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @danarts.

The Grateful Dead’s long, strange, 50-year trip, to end with the four surviving members performing two concerts in Santa Clara this weekend and three more in Chicago in early July, has gotten a bit stranger.

When the Chicago concerts were initially announced early this year, Ticketmaster priced tickets from $59.99 to $199.50, but the cost went up fast. Some buyers paid over $10,000 for a single ticket, and sellers asked as much as $100,000 for a three-day passe.

As KRCB Radio’s B.J. Griffith quipped, “For the price of a ticket, I hope Jerry shows up …”

The Grateful Dead’s lead guitartist, singer and songwriter Jerry Garica, died in 1995 of a heart attack.

The farewell reunion concerts will feature bassist and singer Phil Lesh, guitarist and singer Bob Weir and drummers Mickey Hart, who lives in Occidental, and Bill Kreutzman.

When two more concerts were added, at 7 p.m. Saturday (June 27) and 6 p.m. Sunday (June 28) at Levi Stadium in Santa Clara, concert industry watchers expected similar price spikes, but this past week tickets were available for as little as $15.

Whether the lower prices are mostly because the high prices scared some fans off, or partly because remaining tickets are remnants located farther from the stage, the current situation seems truer to the spirit of the band, which performed free in Bay Area parks in the ’60s.

Some fans are opting for live streams of the concerts, rather than trekking down to take seats in the stratosphere of the stadium’s back rows.

As drummer John Morrison, who serves on the board of directors of the Sonoma County Blues Society,  put it: “I’m older and lazier, but I love the Dead, since 1967. The Dead were a community institution, a way of living and playing music.”

For information, news and updates: http://dead-50.net/

Robert Plant

A limited number of single-day VIP passes are now available for the third annual BottleRock Napa Valley music festival, running May 29-31 at the Napa Valley Expo in downtown Napa.

Imagine Dragons, which recently released its newest album, “Smoke + Mirrors,” will kick off the festival on Friday, May 29, followed by Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin on Saturday, May 30, and No Doubt, closing the three-day event on Sunday, May 31.

More than 70 musical acts will appear on four stages during the festival. The lineup includes the Avett Brothers, Foster the People, Passion Pit, Snoop Dogg, Cage The Elephant, Young the Giant, Gipsy Kings, Capital Cities, AWOLNATION, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Portugal. The Man, American Authors, Public Enemy and more.

Pricing for single-day VIP passes start at $240, and are available at BottleRockNapaValley.com and Eventbrite.com

Bernie Krause

Bernie Krause of Glen Ellen, who has made a career of recording natural sounds, has found a new outlet for his art.

Krause collaborated with choreographer Alonzo King and composer Richard Blackford to create a new dance piece, which will have its world premiere in San Francisco in April.

The Alonzo King LINES Ballet will perform the untitled piece April 3-12 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Krause, 76, has spent more than four decades traveling around world, building an archive of over 4,500 hours of field recordings of 15,000 species in their natural habitats.

He worked as a studio guitarist in the late 1950s and performed with the folk group The Weavers in the 1960s. He and musical partner Paul Beaver pioneered the use of  the synthesizer in popular music in the late ‘60s.

Blackford and Krause collaborated previously to produce a 30-minute symphony, “The Great Animal Orchestra: Symphony for Orchestra and Wild Soundscapes,” featuring the 70-piece BBC National Orchestra of Wales and incorporating recorded natural sounds.

Krause is also the author of the book “The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World’s Wild Places,” published in 2012.

The Alonzo King LINES Ballet spring season also will feature the return of King’s Concerto for Two Violins, with the Philharmonia Baroque Chamber Players performing live.

Ticket prices run from $30 to $65. A gala performance April 11 will star Grammy Award-winning singer Lisa Fischer, featured in the film “Twenty Feet from Stardom,” with tickets priced at $600.

Information: 415-978-2787, linesballet.org.

You can reach staff writer Dan Taylor at 521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com.

Transcendence Theater Company at Jack London State Historic Park.

The popular Transcendence Theater Company, which has built a large fan base with its outdoor shows in Jack London State Historic Park, will move indoors for a new series called “Transcendence at Wells Fargo Center for the Arts.”

The company, made up of musical theater performers with Broadway and national touring company credits, will present a one-night only concert, titled “Oh, What a Night,” on June 24 at Wells Fargo Center, and return Dec. 4-5 to put on its first-ever holiday show, “A Broadway Holiday Extravaganza.”

Tickets will go on sale April 3, priced from $39 to $129. For tickets and information, phone 707-546-3600, visit wellsfargoarts.org or go to the center’s box office at 50 Mark West Spring Road, Santa Rosa.

The shows are sponsored by Gary and Marcia Nelson of the Nelson Family of Companies, who have a long record of supporting arts, education and health programs, including a $3 million gift to the Sonoma Valley Hospital.
The Wells Fargo Center shows will serve as bookends for the Transcendence company’s regular summer season this year at Jack London State Historic Park in Glen Ellen, offering musical revues from June 29 through Sept. 13.

The company is contracted to continue appearing through 2019 at the park. The troupe has raised more than $117,000 for the park, and drew 14,000 visitors last summer.

You can reach staff writer Dan Taylor at 521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com.

Gabriel Kahane

Singer, songwriter and pianist Gabriel Kahane, who spent his teenage years in Santa Rosa and has gone on to gain national attention, will perform Sunday, March 29, in Sebastopol.

He’ll perform his own material from his latest album, “The Ambassador,” released last year. The album was named “one of the year’s very best” by Rolling Stone and described as “remarkable” by the New York Times.

The show, a benefit for the Main Stage West theater company in Sebastopol, starts at 5 p.m. at the French Garden Restaurant, 8050 Bodega Ave. The event includes Kahane’s concert, dinner and silent and live auctions.

Kahane, the son of Jeffery Kahane, pianist and former conductor of the Santa Rosa Symphony, has a longstanding connection with the leaders of the Sebastopol theater.

He attended Santa Rosa High School and participated in its ArtQuest program. Elizabeth Craven, a former ArtQuest teacher, is now artistic director of Main Stage West. Her husband John Craven succeeded her at ArtQuest.

“John and I heard Gabriel perform in last Seattle, and were simply blown away,” Elizabeth Craven said. “There’s a good reason why Gabriel Kahane’s star is rising as a major force in music and theater. I feel then, and feel now, that I am in the presence of genius when he plays. This may the last time anyone sees him perform in a room this intimate.”

Tickets for the Sebastopol dinner and concert cost $175 each. For tickets and information, phone 823-0177 or visit mainstagewest.com.

You can reach staff writer Dan Taylor at 521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com.

Kate Eilertsen, executive director of the Sonoma Museum Valley Museum of Art since 2009, has been appointed to the museum’s newly created post of artistic director.

In her new role, Eilertsen will focus primarily on the downtown Sonoma museum’s exhibitions and educational programs.

“This is a dream come true, to really concentrate on developing the artistic programs for this museum,” Eilertsen said in a statement issued Monday.

This past winter, Eilertsen curated the first retrospective exhibit of work by Eleanor Coppola, artist, filmmaker and wife of film director and winery owner Francis Ford Copppla, which closed in January at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art.

The museum board plans to recruit a new executive editor to oversee the museum’s budget, marketing and development, said board president Douglas Fenn Wilson in the museum’s announcement of Eilertsen’s new role.

Eilertsen, 60, began her career at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where she oversaw the installation of the Rockefeller collection. She went on to become exhibitions director for all three Harvard University Art Museums.

After moving to California, she founded Teen Inspiration, which provided visual arts and music programs for teen-agers in San Rafael.

Eilertsen gathered extensive experience in the Bay Area, working as associate dean and director for community education at the San Francisco Art Institute, special projects manager for the University of California at Berkeley Museum at Blackhawk, director of the Museum of Craft and Folk Art in San Francisco and acting director of visual arts at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

Since coming to the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, Eilertsen has emphasized efforts to make the museum accessible to a broad audience and keep it active in the community.

Located at 551 Broadway, not far from Sonoma Plaza, the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art opened in 1998. For more information: 707-939-7862 or svma.org.

You can reach staff writer Dan Taylor at 521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com.

Brent Anderson

The Outer Planes Comics and Games store in downtown Santa Rosa will celebrate its 10th anniversary this Saturday and Sunday, March 14 and 15, with a sale, special guests, events, door prizes and promotional gifts.

The program includes a Cosplay costume role-playing game tournament starting at noon Saturday, plus a magic show presented by the Shuffles Magical Ice Cream Shoppe, food from the BBQ Spot and coffee from the Brew Coffee House.

On Sunday, guests include comic book artist Brent Anderson of Windsor, best-known for his work on the Astro City series, as well as comics writer Tom Beland of “True Story,” “Fantastic Four” and “Chicabra,” and Jonathan Rinzler, a writer and editor for George Lucas Licensing’s book division.

Outer Planes is at 519 Mendocino Ave., Santa Rosa. Information: 546-2000, outerplanes.com.

Si Kahn

The Sonoma County Folk Society will present its 15th annual Bluegrass and Folk Festival from 1 to 9 p.m. Saturday, March 14, in Sebastopol.

The lineup includes Si Kahn, Anne and Pete Sibley, the Kathy Kallick Band, Steep Ravine, Bean Creek and Dan Crary, Steve Spurgin and Bill Evans.

Doors open at noon at the Sebastopol Community Cultural Center, 390 Morris St., Sebastopol.

Admission: $30 in advance; $35 at the door.

Information: 823-1511, seb.org.

Ryan Adams will bring his current concert tour to the Wells Fargo Center  at 8 p.m. May 22.

Tickets go on sale at noon Friday, March 13, for $49-$59.

His 2014  album, “Ryan Adams,” released on Pax-Am/Blue Note, was nominated for three Grammy Awards, including best rock album, and best rock song and best rock performance for the album’s lead single, “Gimme Something Good.”

For tickets, visit wellsfargocenterarts.org, call 707-546-3600 or go to the center box office at 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa.