Songs of nostalgia with the Oakland East Bay Symphony

Diana Gameros will play at the Oakland East Bay Symphony’s “Notes From Mexico” concert on Friday, March 27. Diana Gameros will play at the Oakland East Bay Symphony’s “Notes From Mexico” concert on Friday, March 27. Photo: Claudio Nalerio Photo: Claudio Nalerio Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Songs of nostalgia with the Oakland East Bay Symphony 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

Maestro Michael Morgan got a taste of Diana Gameros’ pure, pretty voice at the Fox Theater in Oakland last winter, when the Mexican-born San Francisco singer performed with the Magik*Magik Orchestra. Morgan, who was conducting other pieces on the program celebrating the flexible orchestra’s fifth birthday, pretty much booked her on the spot for this week’s “Notes From Mexico” concert with the Oakland East Bay Symphony at the Paramount Theatre.

Gameros, a Juarez native who went to live with an aunt in Michigan at 13 and attended high school and (after a spell back home in Mexico) college there, will sing and play guitar in orchestral settings of her piece “En Juarez,” and a medley of traditional Mexican songs: Agustin Lara’s classic “Farolito,” “Mi Ranchito” by Felipe Valdéz Leal and José López Alvarez’s “Canción Mixteca” (memorably played on guitar by Ry Cooder and sung by actor Harry Dean Stanton in the Wim Wenders film “Paris, Texas”). The music was arranged by Magik*Magik’s Minna Choi.

“I put together traditional folk songs that talk about the homeland and being away from it, and nostalgia and love,” says Gameros, 33, who first developed a following at the Roosevelt Tamale Parlor on 24th Street — where she played weekend nights for five years and still works the last Friday of the month — and has fronted bands with instrumentalists like clarinetist Patrick Wolff in larger spaces like Freight & Salvage and SFJAZZ.

“My life as an immigrant has played a huge role in my compositions,” she says. “I guess my love life has been good, so I don’t really write songs about heartbreak, although I do write about the heartbreak of being away from my homeland and going through difficult situations. I also get inspiration from other people’s stories, some of which are 100 times worse than mine. I write about the question of identity, home and belonging. The songs present struggles, but they’re positive and have hopeful resolutions. I’m a positive person in general.”

Gameros studied classical piano and recording technology at Grand Rapids Community College, singing in a chorus that made it to Carnegie Hall. But she opted to pursue songwriting and performing in a personal style influenced by the quiet intensity of artists like the late, great Brazilian singer Elis Regina and her daughter Maria Rita, and bossa nova singer Rosa Passos. She also digs Bjork, the Canadian indie-rock band Patrick Watson, and the late Costa Rican-born Mexican ranchera singer Chavela Vargas, called “la voz áspera de la ternura,” the rough voice of tenderness.

“I don’t really use her approach in my music, the way she sings, but I really value it,” says Gameros, who didn’t much like the traditional Mexican folk music she heard as a kid, which she found monotonous and overly simple. She later came to appreciate the simple beauty of songs that “when I think back, really made an impact on me. I related that music to being with family, and moments I cherish.”

Gameros was surprised how people who don’t speak Spanish respond to her music. “I tell them I wish I could have supertitles, like at the opera, but they say it doesn’t matter — they enjoy the sound and the voice. They get the feeling. I tell them what I was thinking. You don’t have to be an immigrant to think back about your home and childhood, the colors and smells of your hometown.”

For more information, go to www.oebs.org.

San Francisco Playhouse lineup

“Dogfight,” the hit off-Broadway musical comedy by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul — based on the 1991 film about the ’60s San Francisco romance between a young Marine (River Phoenix) about to be shipped off to Vietnam and the unworldly waitress played by Lili Taylor — opens San Francisco Playhouse’s 2015-16 season on Sept. 26. It’s followed by another local premiere: Sarah Ruhl’s “Stage Kiss.”

The theater’s Mainstage season, which Artistic Director Bill English describes thematically as “Truth and Dare,” also includes the West Coast premieres of Andrew Hinderaker’s “Colossal,” billed as a collision of football and dance, and Lolita Chakrabarti’s “Red Velvet,” about the 19th century African American Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge; and a revival of the Cy Coleman, David Zippel and Larry Gelbart musical “City of Angels.” The Playhouse’s Sandbox Series will premiere three new plays to be announced later.

For more information, go to www.sfplayhouse.org.

Gay chorus at Symphony Hall

The San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus spring concert at Davies Hall on April 1 and 2 includes the Bay Area premiere of “For a Look or a Touch,” a choral opera by the prolific composer Jake Heggie.

Presented in collaboration with the Opera, American Conservatory Theater and the Contemporary Jewish Museum, the piece, commissioned by Music of Remembrance, deals with persecution of gay people in Germany during the Holocaust. The chorus will be joined by guest artists baritone Morgan Smith, who sang the role of Starbuck in Heggie’s opera “Moby-Dick,” and actor Kip Niven, accompanied by a chamber orchestra. Members of the chorus and former Opera Adler Fellow Hadleigh Adams will sing excerpts of the work at the Contemporary Jewish Museum on Sunday, March 29.

For more information, go to www.sfgmc.org.

Jesse Hamlin is a Bay Area writer. E-mail: 96hours@sfchronicle.com