Best 9: Top events for the week ahead in Santa Cruz County arts & entertainment, Feb. 27-March 6

Here they are, nine necessary know-abouts for the week ahead. It’s the false-spring B9:

➤ Sure, it’s going to rank as one of the more nerdy Saturday nights you’ve spent in your life. But the annual “Grad Slam” event at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center smartly merges serious academic work with fun reality-show theatrics. A number of grad students from UC Santa Cruz will each have no more than three minutes to pitch their research or artistic project to a general audience in a competition that rewards clarity, passion and relevance. Imagine “America’s Got Talent” if America was dominated by intellectually curious and well-educated people! The Santa Cruz competition is only a precursor to a bigger University of California-wide event in Sacramento in April. It’s one of those rare nights out when you’ll come home smarter than when you left. 

➤ Seattle grunge is three decades out of style, but somehow The Melvins keep pressing on. Famously Kurt Cobain’s favorite band, the M’s were the first sludgy trio to emerge from Aberdeen, Washington, into stardom (Nirvana would soon follow). Now in his 60s, the great Buzz Osborne and his Sideshow Bob haircut are still attacking eardrums. See the legends live at The Catalyst on Tuesday.

➤ Maybe you’re different, but the kind of adrenaline rush I like best? The vicarious kind, the kind where I can watch along without risking life and limb. That’s what the Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival promises, three days of jaw-dropping action sports with vivid you-are-there technology, and nobody’s going to go home in a body cast. What’s not to love?

➤ You and I might call it the “harmonica,” but those who carry one often call it the “blues harp.” Either way, Mark Hummel’s annual “Harmonica Blowout” show at Moe’s Alley features the best of the pocket-sized blues harp can do. Eight fine harmonica masters gather under one roof to blow that roof off, Sunday afternoon. 

➤ Next Thursday, March 6, the red carpet comes to Watsonville when the Watsonville Film Festival kicks off at the Green Valley Cinema. Opening Night features a string of stirring short films on the Latino experience in America through the lens of artificial intelligence, queer love, protest art, even the Afterlife. Then comes the afterparty!

➤ For fans of vocal jazz, Kim Nalley ranks right up there with sourdough bread and the Golden Gate Bridge as reasons to love the San Francisco Bay Area. Nalley, no stranger to the Kuumbwa stage either, is a foundational figure in Northern California jazz and a wonderfully warm performer, too. The lovely chanteuse returns to Kuumbwa on Monday. 

➤ What’s all this about “microdosing”? If you’re wondering about this much-ballyhooed method of self-improvement, you might as well go straight to the source, the “Father of Microdosing” himself, psychologist and psychonaut James Fadiman, who appears with co-author Jordan Gruber on Sunday at Bookshop. 

➤ The time that writer Diane Schaffer spent working in a local winery has borne fruit other than deliciously fermented grapes. Inspired by the mystique of the zinfandel grape, she has created a new mystery series she’s calling “Mortal Zin,” and she’s ready to debut the first book in the series, next Wednesday at Bookshop.

➤ For generations, Sergei Prokofiev’s spritely “Peter and the Wolf” has been employed as a shiny bauble to draw children into a lifelong passion for classical music. And largely it’s worked. The Santa Cruz Symphony continues the tradition with its live version of “Peter” on Sunday, along with other opportunities for inspiration including the Kuumbwa Jazz Honor Band and the colorful folklórico group Esperanza Del Valle. It’s family concert time!