Concerts

Jorja Smith

Nov 19 At 21 years old Jorja Smith carries startling assurance, her voice rich yet pliable. The English R&B singer recently made standout appearances on Drake’s More Life and Kendrick Lamar’s Black Panther soundtrack. But her first full album, this year’s Lost and Found, finds an artist able to easily command a room on her own—whether with belting soul or a poised freestyle rap. Showbox SoDo

Books & Talks

Susan Orlean

Nov 7 Susan Orlean has the mystifying ability to turn eclectic, seemingly diminutive subjects—orchids, the real Rin Tin Tin—into books of mesmeric, meditative inquiry. Her newest, The Library Book, centers on a 1986 Los Angeles Public Library fire that burned through over 400,000 books. Hearing her read at Central Library ought to add an extra (figurative) spark. Central Library

Visual Art

Georges Rouault's Miserere

Nov 1–Dec 1 In the early twentieth century, a Parisian art dealer commissioned fauvist painter Georges Rouault to create 100 etchings. Rouault finished only 58, forming Miserere. The series takes its titular lament and transposes it to the visual, a panorama of religious haunting (skeletons, Jesus on the cross) so bleak it achieves a sort of strange comedy, like Kafka via a French cathedral. Davidson Galleries

Books & Talks

Danez Smith

“In America, all the land is haunted…. My poems try to honor the dead but also protect folks who are still here.” —Danez Smith

Nov 26 Danez Smith—a YouTube poetry star and author of National Book Award–nominated Don’t Call Us Dead—is sheer verve on page and in performance. Broadway Performance Hall

Dance

All Premiere: Pacific Northwest Ballet

Nov 2–11 Pacific Northwest Ballet’s second performance this year is a trilogy of first runs. Local soloist Kyle Davis premieres his new work, A Dark and Lonely Space, along with the PNB debuts of Alejandro Cerrudo’s Silent Ghost and Alexander Ekman’s international sensation Cacti, which satirizes ballet’s physical decadence even as the piece indulges in percussive movement. McCaw Hall