Honoring Dizzy Gillespie and ‘Mother’

* MUSIC: Ami Porat leads his orchestra, the Mozart Camerata, in a Mozart program at Irvine Barclay Theatre, Saturday night at 8, and at St. Andrew’s Church in Newport Beach, Sunday at 4 p.m. Daniel Shapiro will be the soloist in the Piano Concerto No. 15. The program will also include the symphonies Nos. 1 and 36 (“Linz”). . . . James Vail conducts Bach’s “Christmas” Oratorio at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Westwood, Sunday at 3 p.m. . . . Also in Westwood, Sunday at 4 p.m. at Westwood United Methodist Church, pianist Michael Sellers plays music by Grieg, Villa-Lobos, Chopin and Liszt.

* JAZZ: Three men closely associated with jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie--trumpeter Jon Faddis, bassist John Lee and drummer Ignacio Berroa--will be joined by emerging piano great Cyrus Chestnut tonight and Saturday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center’s Jazz Club at the Center for “All-Star Tribute: Dizzy--the Man and His Music.” . . . In from New Zealand, the Rodger Fox Big Band, with guest trombonist Bill Reichenbach, plays Sunday at the Jazz Bakery in Culver City.

* MOVIES: The French are in town with a couple of highly touted films. First, there’s “La Ceremonie” (Edwards University, Irvine), Claude Chabrol’s psychological suspense drama, named best foreign film of 1996 by the Los Angeles Film Critics’ Assn. It stars Jacqueline Bisset, Sandrine Bonnaire and Isabelle Huppert. And at the Port Theatre in Newport Beach there’s “Thieves (Les Voleurs),” reuniting the “Ma Saison Preferee” team of writer-director Andre Techine with stars Catherine Deneuve and Daniel Auteuil. . . . Three talked-about films open today in Orange County after limited runs in L.A.: “Mother,” Albert Brooks’ latest comedy about--surprise--a dysfunctional family, with Debbie Reynolds in the title role;”Everyone Says I Love You,” Woody Allen’s stab at a musical (Edwards South Coast Village 3, Santa Ana), and “Evita,” Madonna’s latest stab at movie stardom (Edwards Newport Cinemas). . . . Kenneth Branagh has brought “Hamlet” (Royal, West L.A.) to the screen in its full text with maximum accessibility to contemporary audiences in a handsome film that is never less than compelling. Branagh’s own Hamlet is more dynamic than ambiguous, but he soars. . . . The Sunset 5’s “Garbo Talks” Saturday and Sunday 11 a.m. series in L.A. commences with the grittier, rarely seen German-language version of “Anna Christie” (1930). . . . Los Angeles County Museum of Art will present two different programs of jazz legends on film, “Giants of Jazz” Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. (213) 857-6010.

* POP MUSIC: The enigmatic and reclusive Kendra Smith, a forerunner of Hope Sandoval in the band that would become Mazzy Star, returns to her hometown of Los Angeles for a rare appearance at Spaceland in Silver Lake on Saturday.

* PHOTOGRAPHY: Husband-and-wife photographers Diane Cook and Len Jenshel document the awesome beauty of natural disasters in “Hot Spots: America’s Volcanic Landscape,” currently on view at Paul Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles. Fascinated with American culture and its landscape, the two capture erupting volcanoes, geysers, cinder cones and lava fields in an exhibition of black-and-white prints by Cook and lush color photos by Jenshel. On view through Jan. 21.

* THEATER: “Into the Woods,” Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s fairy-tale musical for adults (and children over age 8), is in good hands at the Interact Theatre in North Hollywood, thanks to John Rubinstein’s strong direction and the top-notch cast.