The Season Ahead

By Janice Berman, David Bratman, Mickey Butts, Jeff Dunn, Lisa Hirsch, Michelle Dulak Thomson, Michael Zwiebach

In this issue, our writers and editors (identified by their initials) highlight some of the events they’re looking forward to, now through May. They’re arranged chronologically to help you plan your schedules. Of course, there are many other worthy performances all year throughout the Bay Area, so it pays to check SFCV’s comprehensive Performance Calendar, now with many more listings from a wider range of presenters, as well as the more selective filter of our critics’ top picks in the popular weekly Listening Ahead column.

January

Ian Bostridge

Ian Bostridge is, of course, an international opera star. But he is clearly much more interested in using his well-controlled tenor voice in recitals. His recordings are mainly song recitals, including treasurable ones of Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin and Schumann songs. He’s had a song cycle written for him by Hans Werner Henze, and his own Perspectives series at Carnegie Hall. Bostridge is an intellectual artist, but he has fire and panache when required, and good looks as well. His San Francisco Performances show should be a winner.

Jan 22, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, $30-$49, (415) 398-6449, www.performances.org. (M.Z.)

Ian Bostridge

Cunningham at Stanford

Merce Cunningham, who turns 89 on April 16, goes back to school at Stanford armed with even more new stuff than usual to go with his ever-fresh choreography. This time it’s iPods. Don’t worry. If you’re a dinosaur, he’ll lend you one of his, the better to watch the Mikel Rouse-scored version of Cunningham’s 2006 eyeSpace, which Stanford Lively Arts runs Friday night. The next night, Annea Lockwood’s score for eyeSpace will be performed live. Also on the bill: Crises, CRWDSPCR, and BIPED. If you’ve never seen the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, you’ve never seen dance, and likely, never heard fabulously weird music. Just go.

Jan. 25 and 26, 8 p.m., Memorial Auditorium, Stanford University, $10-$46, (650) 725-2787, www.livelyarts.stanford.edu. (J.B.)

Kronos Quartet Family Matinee

Introduce the kids to Kronos at this lively and family-friendly San Francisco Performances event. For a feel of what it’s like, see a previous family matinee review from this critic.

Jan. 26, 11 a.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco; $10-$18, (415) 392-4400, www.performances.org. (M.B.)

Tsontakis in Santa Rosa

The Santa Rosa Symphony, known for its excellent programming and energetic new conductor, Bruno Ferrandis, will bring a special treat to the Bay Area, the orchestral music of George Tsontakis. Every Tsontakis work I’ve heard has been impressive. One of his symphonic works, The Dove Descending, wore out my CD player’s laser beam — honestly. Ferrandis will conduct the West Coast premiere of Tsontakis’ Clair de Lune (no, not an arrangement of the Debussy), along with Bach, Mendelssohn, and Wagner standards.

Jan. 26, 28, 8 p.m., and Jan. 27, 3 p.m. Wells Fargo Center for the Arts, Santa Rosa, $27-$50, (707) 546-8742, www.santarosasymphony.com. (J.D.)

Bruno Ferrandis

Christopher Taylor

The pianist dazzled New York audiences with his command of Messiaen’s “vehemently intense and ferociously difficult” Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus (Twenty contemplations on the infant Jesus), and previously his interpretation of György Ligeti’s entire piano études (listen to a Vingt performance online and read SFCV’s 2005 review of the Ligeti performance). Now’s your chance to hear what the buzz is all about.

Jan. 27, 3 p.m., Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley, $34, (510) 642-9988, www.calperfs.berkeley.edu. (M.B.)

Belcea Quartet

The Belcea Quartet’s San Francisco Performances-sponsored Bay Area debut two years ago revealed one of the most intelligent and attractive ensembles going, a quartet whose out-of-the-ordinary attention to detail somehow coexisted with a thoroughgoing sense of spontaneity. This time around, the ensemble brings a program that ought to test those virtues in any number of ways: Schubert’s mammoth, late, G-Major Quartet, Webern’s Five Pieces, and Haydn’s Quartet in G Major, Op. 77, No.1.

Jan. 31, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, $30-$45, (415) 398-6449, www.performances.org. (M.D.T.)

February

Classical Meets Electronica

And now for something completely different. Classical music will never be accused of stuffiness at Mercury Soul, an “electro-acoustic evening” held at the Mezzanine dance club in San Francisco. Following up on the original event held in Berlin’s Volksbühne in 2005 with the Berlin Philharmonic is Mason Bates, DJ and composer of “symphonic electronica” (see SFCV’s review), Benjamin Shwartz, San Francisco Symphony resident conductor and director of the SFS Youth Symphony, and visual designer Anne Patterson. The trio will create an immersive environment in which trip-hop, techno, and house music are interspersed with short chamber-orchestra performances of classical music by composers like Ligeti, Nancarrow, and Bates, with the musicians scattered around the art-installation-bedecked club. Whether the concept works or not, or it attracts the young crowd for classical music it’s after, this should definitely be a scene.

Feb. 1, 9 p.m., The Mezzanine, San Francisco, $10, www.mercurysoul.org. (M.B.)

Alexander String Quartet, “Inspirations”

For some years now the Alexander String Quartet has busied itself giving Bay Area quartet lovers good reasons not to sleep in on Saturday mornings. This season the ensemble’s 10 a.m. Herbst Theatre series features a not unprecedented but still irresistible design: two quartets per program, one “standard rep,” one more recent, less familiar, and in some way related. On the former side of the ledger are the likes of Haydn, Bartók (two of his six), and Schubert; on the latter, Carter (No. 2), Wayne Peterson, George Crumb (Black Angels), and the Alexanders’ longtime colleague Robert Greenberg. The series opener juxtaposes Maurice Ravel’s 1903 String Quartet with Lou Harrison’s Quartet Set.

Feb. 2 – May 17 (Saturdays, dates vary), 10 a.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, $22-$34, (415) 398-6449, www.performances.org. (M.D.T.)

Alexander String Quartet

San Francisco Contemporary Music Players

In a concert titled “Strongbox of American Music,” the ensemble features two works it commissioned, Steven Mackey’s Indigenous Instruments and David Sheinfeld’s Dear Theo, Morton Feldman’s Bass Clarinet and Percussion, and a premiere of a violin concerto by Jorge Liderman, Furthermore ….

Feb. 4, 8 p.m., Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum, San Francisco, $10-$27, (415) 978-2787, www.sfcmp.org. (L.H.)

Emerson Quartet

As though to balance its all-Brahms recital last fall, the Emerson Quartet’s next Bay Area program, courtesy of Stanford Lively Arts, is a cache of enticingly unfamiliar music. Béla Bartók’s tersest and thorniest quartet, the Third, is the one reasonably standard repertoire item on offer. Alongside it are Bohuslav Martinu’s 1929 Third Quartet (his tersest, and a bright and colorful little romp it is), as well as his Three Madrigals for violin and viola, and Bay Area premieres of new quartets by Bright Sheng and Kaija Saariaho.

Feb. 6, 8 p.m., Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford, $44-$48, (650) 725-2787, livelyarts.stanford.edu. (M.D.T.)

Emerson Quartet

Photo by Mitch Jenkins

Ligeti at San Francisco Symphony

Guest conductor Ingo Metzmacher hones in on central Europe and Russia in a program divided between Hungarians in the first half and Shostakovich’s Sixth Symphony in the second. György Ligeti’s San Francisco Polyphony shows that there really were some exciting avant-garde works written in the 1970s, and Hélène Grimaud’s rendition of the exquisite second movement of Béla Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto should not be missed.

Feb. 7-9, 8 p.m., Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, $25-$125, (415) 864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org. (J.D.)

Redwood Symphony: The American Sound

Baritone Cole Grissom will sing arias from three great American operas: Douglas Moore’s The Ballad of Baby Doe, Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah, and Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking. The program is filled out with a variety of bright American orchestral sounds by Tobias Picker, Joan Tower, Vivian Fung, and Arturo Marquez, plus Copland’s Appalachian Spring, without which no Americana program would be complete. Eric Kujawsky and Barbara Day Turner will conduct.

Feb. 9, 8 p.m., Cunningham Memorial Chapel, Notre Dame de Namur University, Belmont, $10-$25, (650) 366-6872, www.redwoodsymphony.org. (D.B.)

Academy of Ancient Music

The terrific orchestra returns to the Bay Area, courtesy of Stanford Lively Arts. With harpsichordist Richard Egarr in tow, the group navigates a program of popular concertos by Bach, Handel, and Telemann.

Feb. 13, 8 p.m., Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford University, $22-$48, (65o) 723-2551, www.livelyarts.stanford.edu. (M.Z.)

Back-to-Back Giselles

The wonderful and peripatetic Georgian ballerina Nina Ananiashvili came to the United States when she was 19 to dance with the New York City Ballet, founded by George Balanchine, another Georgian, at the beginning of the thaw in U.S.-Soviet relations (and she did an interview without a Soviet minder in the room). Ananiashvili was one of the first Russian stars to freelance widely outside of Russia. Now she’s bringing the State Ballet of Georgia, where she has been director since 2004, to Cal Performances. The music will come from the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, which did such a bang-up job last season playing for American Ballet Theatre’s visit. After a Thursday opener consisting of Balanchine’s Chaconne (music by Gluck), plus U.S. premieres as yet unannounced from Yuri Possokhov and Alexei Ratmansky — two of the most inventive choreographers around — Ananiashvili, now in her gorgeous 40s, will star in her company’s Giselle, Saturday night only, at Zellerbach Hall.

Ballerina Nina Ananiashvili

But wait, what’s that sound across the Bay? Why, it’s San Francisco Ballet, opening its own run of Giselle Saturday night, Feb. 16. Theirs, with a dazzling array of Giselles to choose among, is choreographed by artistic director Helgi Tomasson, with the orchestra directed by Martin West. Perfect for Valentine’s Day weekend: If Giselle’s story and the dancing plus the Adolphe Adam score don’t combine to break your heart, then you don’t have one. After that, we can look forward to the three-night streak of premieres and parade of composers (John Adams, for one) commemorating SFB’s 75th anniversary.

Feb. 14-16, 8 p.m., Feb. 17, 3 p.m., Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley, $34-$90, (510) 642-9988, www.calperfs.berkeley.edu; Feb. 16-24, times vary, War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, $15-$265, (415) 865-2000, www.sfballet.org. (J.B.)

Benjamin Alard

At age 22, harpsichordist/organist Benjamin Alard’s win in the prestigious Bruges Competition is already three years behind him. His fascinating first album (on the indie Hortus label), garnered accolades not only for his dazzling technique, but also for an intelligent, adventurous program (listen at his MySpace page). He appears in the Bay Area at MusicSources, a conspicuously small location, where tickets are apt to sell out fast. Don’t be left behind.

Feb. 15, 8 p.m., MusicSources, Berkeley, $15-$18, (510) 528-1685, www.musicsources.org. (M.Z.)

Benjamin Alard

Golijov Lullaby

The first West Coast performance of a work from one of the hottest composers around today, Osvaldo Golijov, will be introduced by candidate conductor Hugh Wolff, soprano Heidi Melton, and the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra. Night of the Flying Horses is based on a lullaby written for a Sally Potter film, but after a New Jersey critic heard it, he wrote he’d never sleep because he’d keep begging to hear it again. Also on the program are works by Aaron Jay Kernis, Shostakovich, and Beethoven

Feb. 21, 8 p.m., Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley, $40-$60, (510) 841-2800, www.berkeleysymphony.org. (J.D.)

Hugh Wolff

Artists’ Vocal Ensemble

The professional chorus known as AVE, along with the Whole Noyse ensemble, present “1508,” which features the extraordinary Choralis Constantinus by Heinrich Isaac exactly 500 years after it was commissioned. The program also includes works by Isaac’s contemporary Josquin des Prez, also Flemish-born. (Listen to AVE online.)

Feb. 22, 8 p.m., St. Ignatius Church, San Francisco; Feb. 23, 8 p.m., St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Berkeley; Feb. 24, 5:30 p.m., Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church, Lafayette; $10-$25, askave@yahoo.com, www.ave-music.org. (L.H.)

American Bach Soloists

Jeffrey Thomas has designed such a varied and fascinating season for the American Bach Soloists that choosing one concert to highlight is a vexing problem. Those who would like to have their jaws drop right out of their heads will do well to mark ABS’ last concert of the season, with trumpeter John Thiessen displaying his usual incredible control of a treacherous instrument. For me, the can’t-miss event is the choral concert, “Vocal Visionaries,” which offers an unusually varied program for ABS, ranging from the “perfected art” of Tomas Luis de Victoria’s Requiem to Richard Strauss and contemporary composers Eric Whitacre and Sven-David Sandström. The chorus has always been at the heart of ABS’ work, and they are pretty close to perfection when they’re on.

Feb. 29, 8 p.m. St. Stephen’s Church, Belvedere; March 1, 8 p.m., First Congregational Church, Berkeley; March 2, 7 p.m., St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, San Francisco; March 3, 8 p.m., Davis Community Church, Davis; $10-$42, (415) 621-7900, www.americanbach.org. (M.Z.)

March

Song of Peace

On the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, choruses around the world are joining together to sing a song of peace. Singers pledge to perform a setting of “Dona nobis pacem,” or words that call for peace in another language, during the month of March. Check the Web site for updates, but so far participating choruses in the Bay Area, where the initiative began, include Schola Cantorum San Francisco, San Francisco Renaissance Voices, and the Sonoma Valley Chorale.

March 2008, dates, times, and locations vary, info@songofpeace.org, www.songofpeace.org. (M.B.)

Upshaw in Ayre

Soprano Dawn Upshaw, the great champion of contemporary music, comes to Berkeley for a performance of Osvaldo Golijov’s Ayre, an eclectic setting of 15th-century Spanish texts from the Christian, Jewish, and Arab cultures then found in Iberia.

March 1, 8 p.m., Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley, $36-$68, (510) 642-9988, www.calperfs.berkeley.edu. (L.H.)

Dawn Upshaw

Mandelring Quartet

Mill Valley Chamber Music has a knack for unobtrusively wangling Bay Area appearances by first-rate touring musicians who aren’t otherwise playing here. The Mandelring Quartet’s early-March visit, the only local stop-off in a West Coast tour that otherwise skips from Oregon right to Southern California, is a case in point. The youngish German ensemble has a taste for out-of-the-way music — among recent recording projects are a series of quartets by such Brahms contemporaries as Herzogenberg, Dessoff, and Gernsheim — and a most attractive, lithe, and lively collective character. The Mill Valley program includes Shostakovich’s Seventh Quartet and Beethoven’s Op. 59/3, but the real treat is a rareish chance to hear Tchaikovsky’s E-flat-Minor Third Quartet.

March 2, 5 p.m., Mount Tamalpais United Methodist Church, Mill Valley, $20, (415) 381-4453, www.chambermusicmillvalley.org. (M.D.T.)

Brentano Quartet

Any visit by the Brentano Quartet demands attention. The ensemble practices a kind of textural introspection — a concentration on the intricate interrelationships of the four voices — that sets it somewhat apart in today’s quartet field, where unanimity and blend remain the cardinal virtues. March’s San Francisco Performances program runs to temperamental extremes, setting Mendelssohn’s bristly, tormented F-Minor Quartet, Op. 80, alongside Beethoven’s ineffably lyrical Op. 127. Also sharing the program: a new work written for the Brentanos by Bay Area native Gabriela Lena Frank.

March 5, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, $30-$45, (415) 398-6449, www.performances.org. (M.D.T.)

Brentano Quartet

Photo by Christian Steiner

Stanford’s Stravinsky Project

A two-concert festival at Stanford commemorates the master’s 125th birthday. On Friday, Alexander Toradze and pianists from his studio will play a selection of his keyboard works, including the four-hand version of Le Sacre du Printemps. On Saturday and Sunday, Toradze will join the Stanford Symphony, conducted by Jindong Cai, in the piano concerto Capriccio. And the Symphony will play The Firebird accompanied by a puppetry troupe. (Shouldn’t that have been Petrushka?)

March 7, 8, 8 p.m., March 9, 2:30 p.m., Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford, $15-$40, (650) 725-2787, www.livelyarts.stanford.edu. (D.B.)

Clerestory

The professional men’s choir, which put on one of the best concerts of 2007, goes green with “O Sweet Spontaneous Earth,” the first line of an e.e. cummings poem and a tribute to the natural world. Works scheduled on the program include madrigals and folk songs by Byrd, Weelkes, Morley, Vaughan Williams, and Britten.

March 7, 8 p.m., St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, San Francisco; March 9, 7:30 p.m., First Congregational Church, Berkeley; $8-$15, info@clerestory.org, www.clerestory.org. (M.B.)

Orpheus by the Golden Gate

If ever there were a perfect match for Donald Pippin’s witty libretto-translating talents, it would have to be Jacques Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld. The famous musical tidbits, like the cancan, have put the operetta on the perennial hit list, but you rarely get a production that is true to the scathingly funny satire and oh-so-French witticisms of the Hector Crémieux-Ludovic Halévy libretto. (For a how-to primer, listen to Marc Minkowski’s EMI recording).

March 8, 9, 15, 2 p.m., Florence Gould Theatre, San Francisco, $20-$37, (415) 972-8930, www.pocketopera.org. (M.Z.)

Janaki String Trio

Dedicated string trios are uncommon: The body of music for violin, viola, and cello may be of unusually high quality, but it’s still awfully small to support a specialized ensemble. The Janaki Trio, formed at Los Angeles’ Colburn School of Music in 2005 and already winner of two high-profile competitions, is one of the few ensembles making a go of it in this corner of the repertoire. The trio’s Temple Emanu-El recital (program not yet announced) should give us an idea of what the considerable buzz is all about — and incidentally affords a chance to hear Katie Kadarauch, a Janaki member and the San Francisco Symphony’s newly hired acting associate principal violist, up close.

March 10, 7:30 p.m., Temple Emanu-El, San Francisco, $20, (415) 355-9988, www.musicatmeyer.com. (M.D.T.)

Janaki String Trio

Persian Excursions

The Oakland East Bay Symphony offers a rare opportunity to hear the music of two cosmopolitan Iranian composers. Aminollah Hossein, born in Samarkand, spent much of his life in Paris. His Piano Concerto No. 2 will be performed by Californian Tara Kamangar. Loris Tjeknavorian, of Armenian parents, studied in Vienna and later lived in Salzburg while working on his magnum opus, the opera Rostam and Sohrab. The Suite from the opera will be conducted, along with Strauss’ Don Juan, by Music Director Michael Morgan.

March 14, 8 p.m., Paramount Theater, Oakland, $20-$65, (510) 444-0801, www.oebs.org. (J.D.)

Tara Kamangar

Symphony Silicon Valley

Every principal tubaist’s dream is to be the soloist in Vaughan Williams’ Tuba Concerto, accompanied by his own orchestra. This is the chance for SSV’s Tony Clements, who’s been tooting for San Jose orchestras for a long time. Conductor Sara Jobin will also lead the Symphony in popular works by Aaron Copland (Appalachian Spring again) and Richard Strauss.

March 15, 8 p.m., March 16, 2:30 p.m., California Theatre, San Jose, $37-$73, (408) 286-2600, www.symphonysiliconvalley.org. (D.B.)

Takács Quartet

The Takács players are back to Beethoven again — Op. 59/3 and Op. 130 this time, the latter with the Grosse
Fuge in its original place as finale. Those of us who have heard their previous all-Beethoven programs over the past few years will need no prodding to anticipate this one; those who haven’t … well, be advised that there just is no quartet playing much better than this (it gave one of the best concerts of 2007). As usual with this ensemble, the concert’s been sold out for some months, so you’ll have to hope for late openings.

March 16, 3 p.m., Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley, sold out, (510) 642-9988, calperfs.berkeley.edu. (M.D.T.)

Takács Quartet

Pauline Viardot and Friends

Frederica von Stade has been touring her show about the life of the 19th-century diva Pauline Viardot-Garcia for more than a year. There’s even a recording of the recital in London’s Wigmore Hall on the Opera Rara label. And now it comes here, thanks to San Francisco Performances. Regardless of the state of von Stade’s voice, this is a chance to hear some wonderful and rare songs composed by Viardot herself or for her by a variety of composers, from Rossini to Chopin to Berlioz. Marilyn Horne narrates the singer’s life, which included travels through Europe, the U.S., and Mexico, and an affair with the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev. Joining von Stade in performing the songs are soprano Melody Moore and baritone Vladimir Chernov.

March 20, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, $60-$80, (415) 398-6449, www.performances.org. (M.Z.)

Alan Gilbert at the San Francisco Symphony

The music director-designate of the New York Philharmonic returns to the San Francisco Symphony, and this time he’s mostly given free rein to do what he does best, which is to conduct music of the last hundred years. The program is billed as “Richard Goode Plays Mozart,” and that great pianist is sure to satisfy in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 18 — but for my money, the real draws are Steven Stucky’s Son et lumière and Nielsen’s Symphony No. 2, The Four Temperaments.

March 26, 28, 29, 8 p.m.; March 27, 2 p.m.; Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, $25-$125, (415) 864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org. (L.H.)

Swan Lake Double Take

Tchaikovsky Perm Ballet brings Natalia Makarova’s Swan Lake to Cal Performances, with full orchestra. Makarova was one of the great Odette/Odiles, pre- and postdefection from the Kirov, and her choreographies of the Russian classics — my favorite is her La Bayadere — are legion. Among the ballerinas taking on Swan Lake’s legendary dual role: Paulina Semionova, a principal dancer at the Berlin State Opera Ballet.

March 28, 8 p.m.; March 29, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.; March 30, 3 p.m.; Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley, $34-$90, (510) 642-9988, www.calperfs.berkeley.edu. (J.B.)

Swan Lake Pas de Deux

TinAlley String Quartet

The San Jose Chamber Music Society promised to bring us the winner of last fall’s Banff International String Quartet Competition, and here it is: The TinAlley String Quartet from Australia. Past winners of this competition include the St. Lawrence, Miró, and Jupiter Quartets, so with those forerunners we should be in for some excellent and distinctive music-making. It will be a challenging program: Haydn’s delicate Op. 76, No. 5; Mendelssohn’s somber Op. 13; and Bartók’s fearsome Fourth. The quartet is also giving a free performance in San Francisco earlier in March, with the same program except for Alban Berg’s early and rarely heard Op. 3 in place of the Bartók.

March 30, 7 p.m., Le Petit Trianon, San Jose, $25-$40, (408) 286-5111, www.sjchambermusic.org; March 9, 3 p.m., McKenna Theater, San Francisco State University, free, www.morrisonseries.org. (D.B.)

April

New Century Chamber Orchestra

Stuart Canin, NCCO’s founding music director, returns to lend his silken violin tone to the solo part of Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5, K. 219. The concert will also feature string orchestra versions of Mendelssohn’s Octet and Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8. (NCCO gave one of the best concerts of 2007.)

April 3, 8 p.m., St. John’s Presbyterian Church, Berkeley; April 4, 8 p.m., St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Palo Alto; April 5, 8 p.m., Florence Gould Theatre, San Francisco; April 6 at 5 p.m., Osher Marin JCC, San Rafael; $28-$42, (415) 392-4400, www.ncco.org. (D.B.)

Stuart Canin

Anthems by Handel and Purcell

As it always does, Philharmonia Baroque brings in the Philharmonia Chorale to end the season. This year, there won’t be an oratorio. Instead the orchestra performs Handel’s festive Dettingen Te Deum, commemorating a victory by George II and his allies over the French during the War of Austrian Succession. Philharmonia also offers Zadok the Priest, the most famous of the Coronation Anthems composed for George II’s accession in 1727, and two of Purcell’s gorgeous anthems, the forerunners of Handel’s in the English tradition.

April 3, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco; April 4, 8 p.m., First United Methodist Church, Palo Alto; April 5, 8 p.m., and April 6, 7:30 p.m., First Congregational Church, Berkeley; $30-$72, (415) 252-1288, www.philharmonia.org. (M.Z.)

Magnificat

The early-music standouts at Magnificat perform Alessandro Stradella’s farcical Il Trespolo Tutore, a 17th-century precursor to the opera buffa genre. Magnificat offered one of the best concerts of 2007, so don’t miss them this season.

April 11, 8 p.m., First Lutheran Church, Palo Alto; April 12, 8 p.m., St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Berkeley; April 13, 4 p.m., St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, San Francisco; $12-$28, www.magnificatbaroque.org. (M.B.)

eighth blackbird

Like Alarm Will Sound, eighth blackbird is one of the hippest, hottest new-music groups from the New York area. Justly celebrated for its outstanding musicianship, in performance they’re also personable, charming, and entertaining. The ensemble premiered works from an impressive list of composers, but more important, its programs are voyages of discovery. The sextet brings its latest concert, “The Only Moving Thing,” to San Francisco Performances, featuring music by Steve Reich (Double Sextet), and Michael Gordon and Bang on a Can composers David Lang and Julia Wolfe (Singing in the dead of night). Both works were commissioned by eighth blackbird, and the latter includes stage direction by the choreographer Susan Marshall.

April 12, 8 p.m., Herbst Theatre, San Francisco, $27-$39, (415) 398-6449, www.performances.org. (M.Z.)

Kate Royal

Soprano Kate Royal has been making waves across the pond, at Glyndebourne as the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro, and Pamina in The Magic Flute, as well as on her first solo album for EMI (listen online). With a slew of awards under her belt, she arrives April 13 at Cal Performances. At least on record, she has the full-bodied sound of a lyric soprano, and, an impressive chest register.

April 13, 3 p.m., Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley, $42, (510) 642-9988, www.calperfs.berkeley.edu. (M.Z.)

Kate Royal

S.F. Ballet’s New Works Festival

Come April, San Francisco Ballet, led by artistic director Helgi Tomasson, celebrates its 75th anniversary with an array of world premieres by 10 certifiably wonderful choreographers on three consecutive nights. Some are young (Julia Adam), some old masters (Paul Taylor, James Kudelka, Mark Morris), some modern (Margaret Jenkins), some not. Music falls into the same categories, with composers ranging from Bach (for Adam) to John Adams (for Morris), while Paul Dresher provides the music for Bay Area treasure Jenkins, and James Kudelka’s dance has music by Rodney Sharman. Other pairings: Val Caniparoli and Antonin Dvořák, Jorma Elo with Philip Glass and Vladimir Martinov, Yuri Possokhov with Graham Fitkin and Rahul Dev Burman, Stanton Welch and Francis Poulenc, Christopher Wheeldon and Ezio Bosso. As for Taylor, stay tuned. Each evening will then enter the repertory for the season, which continues through May 10.

April 22, 8 p.m., April 23, 7:30 p.m., April 24, 8 p.m., War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, $20-$265, (415) 865-2000, www.sfballet.org. (J.B.)

May

Shostakovich Prevails

In the Bolshoi Theater Jan. 6-13, 1948, Dmitri Shostakovich and most of the leading Soviet composers were subjected to daily humiliation by Central Committee member Andrei Zhdanov and his minions for their so-called “formalism” in music. This interference by moronic, table-pounding, career-ruining bureaucrats was infused into music daily as Shostakovich returned home from the Bolshoi and penned his greatest symphonic passacaglia, the third movement of his Violin Concerto No. 1. Vadim Repin solos; James Gaffigan also conducts Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov.

May 1, 2 p.m., May 2-3, 8 p.m., Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, $25-$125, (415) 864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org. (J.D.)

Bluebeard’s Castle and L’enfant et les sortilegès

Berkeley Opera’s May offering is an inspired pairing of Ravel’s charming L’enfant et les sortilegès, starring, among other characters, a child, a teapot, and a pair of cats, with Bartók’s spooky and searing Bluebeard’s Castle. The two operas will be presented with projections rather than sets, and with a larger orchestra than Berkeley Opera’s usual, on the Julia Morgan stage, rather than in the pit. For a preview of the productions, catch the discussion at the Berkeley Public Library on April 24 at 12:15 p.m.

May 3, 9, 8 p.m., May 7, 7:30 p.m., May 11, 2 p.m., Julia Morgan Theater, Berkeley, $15-$44, (510) 841-1903, www.berkeleyopera.org (L.H.).

Chanticleer

The men’s chorus marks its debut 30 years ago in the Mission Dolores with a concert of Mission-era music in nine of the missions on the Camino Real between San Luis Obispo and San Francisco. Make a road trip of it.

May 15-29, times, dates, and locations vary, $22-$44, (415) 392-4400, www.chanticleer.org. (M.B.)

The Turn of the Screw

San Francisco Lyric Opera presents Benjamin Britten’s eerie, Henry James-based ghost story. The company will be settled into its new home at Fort Mason. While the Web site doesn’t offer details yet, SFLO has consistently cast its productions with strong singers.

May 30, June 6 and 7, 7:30 p.m., June 1, 2 p.m., Cowell Theater, Fort Mason, San Francisco, $18-$32, (415) 345-7575, www.sflyricopera.org. (L.H.)

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