The Week Ahead
October 5, 2026
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Early October on Bainbridge Island offers a mix of crisp fall weather, changing leaves, and a full arts and culture calendar. This week, several events make it especially easy to experience different sides of the island, from an outdoor harvest celebration to live theater and an evening of jazz.
On Saturday, October 3, Bloedel Reserve celebrates the season with its Fall Harvest Celebration, bringing local farmers, growers, and makers together with live music, seasonal food, and family activities throughout the Reserve. Just a day earlier, Bainbridge Performing Arts opens its October production of Fun Home, the Tony Award-winning musical based on Alison Bechdel’s acclaimed graphic memoir. Then on Thursday, October 8, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art continues its Within/Earshot Jazz Festival with METTA QUINTET and a program honoring the centennials of John Coltrane and Miles Davis.
Together, the three events offer very different ways to spend time on the island.
For families or anyone looking to make the most of an October day outdoors, Bloedel Reserve’s harvest celebration combines fall color with local agriculture, food, games, and music. Fun Home offers a more intimate evening at Bainbridge Performing Arts, with a story that explores family, identity, memory, and the ways people come to understand both themselves and one another. Later in the week, METTA QUINTET shifts the focus to jazz and the enduring influence of two of the most important musicians of the 20th century.
The venues themselves also provide a good cross-section of Bainbridge Island. Bloedel Reserve offers 140 acres of gardens, forests, and open spaces on the north end of the island. Bainbridge Performing Arts sits in the heart of Winslow, making a performance easy to pair with dinner or time downtown. Bainbridge Island Museum of Art is just a short walk from the ferry terminal and has become one of the island’s central destinations for visual art, music, and cultural programming.
For longtime residents, these events are a chance to return to familiar places in a different setting. For people newer to Bainbridge, they can also serve as an introduction to some of the organizations that help shape island life throughout the year.
Whether the plan is an afternoon among pumpkins and fall foliage, a night at the theater, or an evening listening to live jazz, the first full week of October offers several good reasons to get out and explore.
Below are three events worth knowing about this week on Bainbridge Island.
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Fall Harvest Celebration at Bloedel Reserve
Bloedel Reserve is leaning fully into autumn on Saturday, October 3, with its Fall Harvest Celebration, an afternoon centered around local farms, food, nature, and community.
From 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., visitors can explore the Reserve while meeting farmers, growers, and makers from around the region. Participating producers include familiar Bainbridge and regional names such as Butler Green Farms, Peaceful Morning Farm, Persephone Farm, Suyematsu Farms, Vireo Farm, and others.
The setting makes the celebration particularly well suited to the season. By early October, a walk through Bloedel Reserve can offer plenty of changing color, and the event gives visitors several reasons to slow down along the way rather than treating the visit as a simple walk through the grounds.
One of the day’s activities is the Reserve’s annual Squash Hunt. Visitors can pick up a map and look for decorative squash hidden throughout the gardens, while younger guests can use a special passport to explore destinations around the property. At the Sheep Sheds, activities include hay bales, pumpkin-themed games, and pumpkin painting.
Pumpkins appear elsewhere in the celebration as well. Visitors can guess the weight of a giant pumpkin at the Residence, and painted pumpkins created during the event will become part of a contest and remain on display during October.
Food and music add to the atmosphere. Pizza and crepes will be available for purchase, along with seasonal drinks including hot cocoa and apple cider as well as beer and wine. The TNT Sextet is scheduled to perform live music from 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
The Puget Sound Mycological Society will also be on hand with information about mushrooms and fungi that can be found around the region at this time of year, adding a natural-history element to a day already focused on the season and the landscape.
For families, the combination of outdoor space and activities makes the event easy to approach without having to follow a strict schedule. Adults who are more interested in local agriculture, food, or gardening can spend time talking with participating producers, while visitors who simply want to enjoy Bloedel in the fall can make the celebration part of a longer walk through the Reserve.
The Fall Harvest Celebration takes place Saturday, October 3, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Bloedel Reserve. It offers a distinctly Bainbridge way to start October: time outdoors, local farms and makers, seasonal food, live music, and plenty of fall color.
Cost, tickets and logistics:
Saturday, October 3, 11am–4pm
Bloedel Reserve, 7571 NE Dolphin Drive, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110
Event fee is $5 for members; $5 for non-members plus regular admission
Timed admission and advance tickets are recommended
Full details here
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Fun Home at Bainbridge Performing Arts
Bainbridge Performing Arts opens its 2026–27 mainstage season this weekend with Fun Home, the Tony Award-winning musical based on Alison Bechdel’s landmark graphic memoir.
The production runs October 2 through October 25 and is directed by Troy Wageman, with associate direction and choreography by Molly Hall and music direction by Will Sanders.
With music by Jeanine Tesori and book and lyrics by Lisa Kron, Fun Home tells its story through the memories of Alison, a cartoonist looking back on her childhood, her family, and her relationship with her father.
As Alison comes of age and begins to understand her own identity as a lesbian, she also starts to recognize parallels between her life and the hidden parts of her father’s. The result is a story that moves between childhood, young adulthood, and adulthood as Alison tries to make sense of what she remembers and what she understands differently with time.
That structure gives the musical a distinctive point of view. Rather than unfolding strictly chronologically, the story moves through memory, allowing different versions of Alison to appear throughout the production and showing how the same experiences can take on new meaning as someone gets older.
The musical won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and has become one of the most widely recognized contemporary works in American musical theater.
What has made Fun Home particularly enduring is the balance it strikes between specificity and universality. Its story is rooted in one family and one person’s experience, but it also explores larger questions about parents and children, identity, grief, secrecy, and the complicated process of understanding the people closest to us.
The production includes mature content and is recommended by Bainbridge Performing Arts for teens and adults. Themes include sexuality and sexual identity, grief and loss, family conflict, mental health struggles, suicide, infidelity, and mature language.
For Bainbridge audiences, the production also marks the beginning of a new mainstage season at BPA. Located in downtown Winslow, the theater is within walking distance of restaurants, shops, and the ferry, making a performance easy to build into an evening out.
The timing also makes Fun Home one of the week’s more flexible options. Unlike a single-day event, the production continues through October 25, so anyone unable to attend opening weekend will have several more opportunities later in the month.
For people who regularly attend theater on Bainbridge, it is a chance to see BPA take on one of the most acclaimed musicals of the past decade. For people who have not been to a local production recently, it offers a strong reason to return.
Fun Home runs October 2 through 25 at Bainbridge Performing Arts. With its combination of music, memory, humor, and emotional complexity, it adds a thoughtful theatrical counterpoint to the outdoor and community events that define much of the island’s fall calendar.
Cost, ticket, and logistics:
October 2–25
Bainbridge Performing Arts
Based on the graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel
Music by Jeanine Tesori; book and lyrics by Lisa Kron
Directed by Troy Wageman
Recommended for teens and adults
Tickets required
Full details here
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An Evening with METTA QUINTET: Coltrane and Miles at 100
The week takes another musical turn on Thursday, October 8, when New York City’s METTA QUINTET comes to Bainbridge Island Museum of Art for an evening celebrating two of the most influential musicians in jazz history: John Coltrane and Miles Davis.
The concert, Coltrane and Miles at 100, is part of BIMA’s 2026 Within/Earshot Jazz Festival and marks the centennial year of both musicians, who were born in 1926.
Coltrane and Davis each left a significant mark on modern jazz, both individually and through their work together. Davis continually reinvented his sound over a career that moved through bebop, cool jazz, modal jazz, fusion, and other styles. Coltrane became known for an equally searching approach to the saxophone, continually expanding his harmonic and improvisational language.
Their paths also famously crossed. Coltrane was a member of Davis’ groups during an important period in the 1950s and appears on recordings that became central to the jazz canon.
Rather than simply recreating that music, METTA QUINTET approaches the evening through contemporary performance and interpretation. The ensemble is known for combining a strong grounding in jazz tradition with an interest in pushing the music forward, making the centennial program as much about the continuing influence of Coltrane and Davis as it is about looking backward.
That approach makes the performance accessible from several directions. Longtime jazz listeners can hear familiar musical ideas reconsidered by a modern ensemble, while people who have only a passing familiarity with Coltrane or Davis can use the concert as an introduction to two figures whose influence extends well beyond jazz.
The setting at Bainbridge Island Museum of Art also makes this a different kind of experience from a larger concert venue. Located in downtown Winslow near the ferry terminal, BIMA provides an intimate environment for live performance and makes the concert easy to pair with dinner or an evening downtown.
For Bainbridge Island, the performance adds another strong arts-focused event to a week that already includes one of the island’s major theater openings. After an outdoor harvest celebration on Saturday and Fun Home at BPA, Thursday evening offers a chance to settle in and experience another part of the island’s cultural calendar.
An Evening with METTA QUINTET: Coltrane and Miles at 100 takes place Thursday, October 8, at Bainbridge Island Museum of Art. Whether someone already knows the recordings of Coltrane and Davis or is simply interested in hearing contemporary musicians engage with a pivotal period in American music, the concert offers a fitting centerpiece for the Within/Earshot Jazz Festival.
Cost, tickets and logistics:
Thursday, October 8, 7–9:30pm
Doors open at 6:45pm
Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, 550 Winslow Way E, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110
All ages
Tickets required
Full details here
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