There are a lot of cool shows to see this weekend, including your last chance to see the beloved Gold Coast  Chamber Players and a focus on Iranian art.

Here’s a partial rundown.

Gold Coast’s fond farewell

Since founding the Gold Coast Chamber Players, Pamela Freund-Striplen has curated a series that would delight any chamber music aficionado. The Lafayette-based violist, who previously performed with the San Francisco Opera Orchestra, is a creative programmer; throughout her years with Gold Coast, she’s curated — and often performed on — dozens of concerts spanning the repertoire, presented in live performances that brought duos, trios, and quartets to the stage. In past seasons, she’s introduced her audiences to top-tier artists including the Alexander, Takacs, and St. Lawrence Quartets.

Now Freund-Striplen has announced the end of the Lafayette series. In its Grand Finale concert, she’ll join violinists Brendan Speltz and Connie Kupka, violist Luke Fleming, and cellists Andrew Janss and David Speltz in a characteristically engaging program of works by Beethoven, Mozart, and F.A. Kummer, with Tchaikovsky’s beautiful “Souvenir de Florence” bringing the music to a close.

A reception follows for all in-person ticket holders, who will also have three months’ access to the concert via Gold Coast’s Digital Concert Hall.

Details: April 15; 7 p.m. Gold Coast Retrospective talk, 7:30 p.m. concert, Grand Finale post-show immediately follows; $15-$45; 925-283-3728; gccpmusic.com.

— Georgia Rowe, Correspondent

Art of Iran arrives in Sausalito

As the fight for women’s rights rages on in Iran, a group of artists have come together for an exhibition showcasing a broad range of Persian art that transcends geopolitical and cultural borders.

Curated by Shiva Pakdel, “Breaking Down Barriers: The Art of Iran” runs through April 23 at the Sausalito Center for the Arts and features more than 240 works in mediums ranging from antique art and artifacts to textiles, ceramics and photographs. The exhibition features works by contemporary Iranian artists living in the United States and Iran.

In addition to Bay Area painter Farnaz Zabetian’s “Woman, Life, Freedom,” an oil-on-canvas version of her mural in San Francisco’s Clarion Alley, you can catch a ticketed screening of Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi’s “No One Knows About Persian Cats,” co-written by imprisoned Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi.

Details: Open 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday through April 23 at Sausalito Center for the Arts, 750 Bridgeway, Sausalito. Exhibit is free. Find more information and details on ticketed events at www.sausalitocenterforthearts.org.

— Jessica Yadegaran, Staff

Stanford Jazz Workshop fest a full day of music

The Stanford Jazz Workshop has been nurturing and inspiring budding jazz musicians for half a century, but Friday marks the launch of a whole new endeavor.

The first annual SJW School Jazz Festival is a free all-day event in Dinkelspiel Auditorium featuring 16 school jazz bands, a noon concert by SJW faculty artists and an evening concert with the Stanford Jazz Orchestra directed by Mike Galisatus, with special guest soloist Francisco Torres (the trombonist best known for his 12-year stint as musical director, producer and arranger for Grammy Award-winning percussionist Poncho Sanchez).

Drawing from some of the state’s top jazz programs, the panel of adjudicators include Gary Pratt, California State University, Northridge professor emeritus, California Jazz Conservatory’s Erik Jekabson, and Santa Clara University’s Kristen Strom.

School performances begin at 8 a.m. and conclude at 6 p.m. The evening concert begins at 7:30 p.m.

Details: Free performances 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.; evening concert at 7:30 p.m. is $10 (free to SFW members, visitors 17 and under); Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford University; stanfordjazz.org/sjw-school-band-festival-2023.

— Andrew Gilbert, Correspondent

Cherry blossom fests

Many folks are familiar with the famous cherry trees in Washington, D.C. A 1912 gift from Japan, they’ve become a tourist sensation with more than a million people flocking to the Tidal Basin each year to see cherry blossoms explode like frozen fireworks. But you don’t have to cross the country to see incredible blossoms. You can see them right here at two blossom festivals this week.

Saratoga’s Hakone Estate and Gardens illuminates its cherry trees each spring for special night viewing. You can still catch Hanami at Hakone today and Friday, but reservations are a must. Book a ticket ($16) before you go at www.hakone.com. Or head for San Francisco’s Japantown celebration, the Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival, this weekend. The largest cherry blossom festival on the West Coast, it draws more than 220,000 people each year for live entertainment, cultural activities and origami and bonsai exhibits. Admission is free; find details at sfcherryblossom.org.

— Bay Area News Group

Celebrating Ingram Marshall

Composer Ingram Marshall, who died in May 2022, was one of the most innovative musicians of his time — one who often incorporated the sounds of nature in works such as his 1981 “Fog Tropes,” which director Martin Scorcese used in the soundtrack of his 2010 film, “Shutter Island.”

Marshall was much loved in the Bay Area, and this weekend he’ll be celebrated by artists and longtime friends such as pianist Sarah Cahill, composer John Adams, and conductor Edwin Outwater in a special event at Herbst Theatre. For fans of this singular artist, it’s a chance to remember Marshall – and hear some of his most evocative works.

Details: 7:30 p.m. April 15, Herbst Theatre, San Francisco; $35; 415-392-2545; www.sfperformances.org.

— Georgia Rowe, Correspondent

‘Redneck’ family values at ACT

In 2018, playwright Qui Nguyen debuted his play “Vietgone,” a stage romance about two Vietnamese refugees in Arkansas based on the story of his own parents. But if you’re thinking it’s a teary-eyed inspirational story about two immigrants sharing love amid the American dream, think again. The decidedly un-woke (and deliriously funny) comedy, set in the early 1970s, is laced with ethnic malapropisms and hillbilly slang, crazy fight scenes, off-color jokes, and rapping. Oh, and puppets.

Nguyen’s acclaimed writing career is full of this sort of thing. As co-director of the Vampire Cowboys stage company, Nguyen was a force in the birth of “geek theater”with such productions as “She Kills Monsters,” “Alice in Slasherland” and “Fight Girl Battle World.” (He also wrote the screenplays for hit films “Raya and the Last Dragon” and “Strange World”). Now Nguyen is back with “Poor Yella Rednecks,” a sequel to Vietgone in which the central characters are married and trying to make a go of running a diner in the Arkansas community they still call home. Like “Vietgone,” “Rednecks” is getting its area premiere at American Conservatory Theater. Expect more of the fast-paced, off-color, entirely inappropriate and button-pushing humor and social commentary that has made Nguyen a young star in the theater world.

Details: Through May 7; ACT’s The Strand theater, 1127 Market St., San Francisco; $25-$60; www.act-sf.org.

— Bay Area News Foundation