Raleigh
Don Quixote
Memorial Auditorium, Progress Energy CenterA few years ago, Miguel Cervantes’ Don Quixote de la Mancha was the landslide winner, in a Nobel Institute-sponsored survey of such authors as Norman Mailer and Salman Rushdie, of the title of “greatest work of fiction ever written.” Not bad for a 400-year-old book written before the modern novel existed. Cervantes was a contemporary of the artists on view at Duke’s Nasher Museum’s From El Greco to Velazquez: Art During the Reign of Philip III. Accordingly, the Carolina Ballet’s Robert Weiss was commissioned to create a ballet the exhibit’s honor. In an interesting twist, Weiss, a George Balanchine disciple, is adapting a work that Balanchine himself tackled in 1965, with Suzanne Farrell playing Dulcinea and the maestro playing the knight errant. The music to that production was composed by Nicolas Nabokov. Weiss employs the works of seven composers for his ballet, including Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio Espagnol. There are five performances, this weekend only, beginning tonight at 8 p.m. Prices range from $20 to $63. Visit www.carolinaballet.com for more information. David Fellerath

Chapel Hill
Elephant 6 Holiday Surprise Tour
Local 506“The film and album stand as the consummate collaboration of the Elephant Six collective,” writes Eric Harris, the Athens resident who helped compile Major Organ and the Adding Machine, a 2000 album and long-awaited film that “features musical and theatrical contributions from Jeff Mangum, Kevin Barnes, William Cullen Hart, Julian Koster, Andrew Reiger, Dixie Blood Moustache and all and sundry who participated in the hypercreative halcyon days of late-90’s Athens, Ga.” The wildly psychedelic film premiered Tuesday night in Athens, and it will roll for the second time tonight in Chapel Hill at 9 p.m. Following the film, a dozen or so members of the fecund and influential Elephant 6 collective come together onstage to play songs: Olivia Tremor Control, Circulatory System, Elf Power, The Music Tapes and more. If we’re lucky, we’ll also get a tune or two from Julian Koster’s The Singing Saw at Christmastime, the first Christmas album ever released by Merge Records. Tickets for tonight’s extravaganza are $10. Grayson Currin

Durham
Milton Nascimento & the Jobim Trio
Page Auditorium, Duke UniversityThe first concert in Duke Performances’ Brazil 58 seriescelebrating the 50th anniversary of bossa nova, and the ground-breaking jazz, pop and tropicália that followedis a must-see: Milton Nascimento, one of the greatest living singer-songwriters of the 20th century, takes the stage with the Jobim Trio, including the son and grandson of bossa nova pioneer Antonio Carlos Jobim. Nascimento, the son of a Rio servant, earned international acclaim at the age of 27 with 1969’s Courage. Over the course of 40 years and more than 30 albums, he has consistently produced bold, genre-defining pop classics, including “Cravo é Canela,” “Travessia” and “Nada Será Como Antes.” Don’t miss this show. Tickets are $5 for Duke students, $22-$38 for the public, and the show begins at 8 p.m. Visit dukeperformances.duke.edu. Matt Saldaña

Pittsboro
Jeffery Beam
McIntyre’s Fine BooksPoet Jeffery Beam’s work is lyrical, metaphysical and queer. His new book, The Beautiful Tendons: Uncollected Queer Poems 1969-2007, features more than 72 short poems, three longer poems and an introductory essay that explore love, spirituality and friendship. He writes with great affection of the physical world and ruminates on the spiritual quest inspired by his Christian upbringing in the “redneck” textile town of Kannapolis, N.C. Beam now lives in Hillsborough. His poetry has received a number of national awards. He reads this evening at 7 p.m. For more information, call the bookstore at 542-3030 or visit Beam’s Web site at www.unc.edu/~jeffbeam. Fiona Morgan