The Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts launches its seventh season with Beethoven, a baritone and a birthday the first weekend in October.

Soon after comes the beating of drums with the Global Drum Project, featuring Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead, and an accompanying Forum@MC titled "Mind Over Music."

Baritone Thomas Hampson's performance on Oct. 4 is the center's gala opener and a birthday celebration for UC Davis supporter Barbara K. Jackson. The evening's venue, Jackson Hall, is named after her and her late husband, W. Turrentine Jackson, professor emeritus of history.

Hampson, accompanied by pianist Craig Rutenberg, plans to sing the works of U.S. composers, including Stephen Foster, Charles Ives and Aaron Copland, plus a selection of "lieder," or German art songs, by Franz Schubert and Franz Liszt.

According to a Mondavi Center news release, Hampson is a leading advocate of the study of American song, and recently was named a special adviser to the Library of Congress.

"To me, the most interesting thing in learning about American song is to realize what our poets and composers have in common -- it's a driving need to tell a story about ourselves and about our becoming this American society," Hampson has said.

The Alexander String Quartet, which has performed in every Mondavi Center season so far, plans two Beethoven concerts in the Studio Theatre on Oct. 5 (ticket availability is limited).

The Global Drum Project is scheduled to perform in Jackson Hall on Oct. 8. A question-and-answer session is planned afterward.

The tour reunites Hart, Zakir Hussain, Sikiru Adepoju and Giovanni Hidalgo of Planet Drum, the 1991 album that received the first Grammy Award in the world music category.

"This is a deep drumming groove," Hart has said. "The Global Drum Project explores rhythm and noise; it's a sound yoga of processed acoustic percussion headed straight for the trance zone that becomes a dance of ancient and modern worlds."

CONCERTS

Thomas Hampson: 8 p.m. Oct. 4

Alexander String Quartet: 2 p.m. (sold out) and 7 p.m. (limited availability) Oct. 5

Global Drum Project: 8 p.m. Oct. 8

Tickets: (530) 754-2787 or (866) 754-2787, or www.mondaviarts.org

FORUM@MC

"Mind Over Music," with Mickey Hart and Petr Janata, assistant professor of psychology, discussing peak experience in music in performers' and listeners' minds. 5 p.m. Oct. 8, Studio Theatre. Free and open to the public.

HAMLET NOT TO BE

The Lenox, Mass.-based Shakespeare & Company has canceled its western U.S. tour, including three performances of Hamlet, Oct. 18-19, at the Mondavi Center. The company cited dramatic increases in travel costs, according to a Mondavi Center news release. Ticket holders need not take any action, officials said in the Sept. 10 news release. They said automatic refunds would be issued within four weeks.