The Target Summer Pops Festival, featuring the Symphony Silicon Valley starts the final weekend in July. It’s a premier South Bay event, which takes place outdoors on the San Jose State campus, and features a variety of old-fashioned pops fare. There’s a kids concert on the first weekend, and then there’s this “Strike Up the Band” concert. If you’re a march aficionado, there are some good ones on this concert, like Sousa’s Liberty Bell. But the highlight, if you ask me, is Artie Shaw’s Clarinet Concerto, not to mention the Louis Moreau Gottschalk pieces arranged for the ballet Cakewalk. There are lots of small joys like those on this concert.
Michael Zwiebach is the senior editor/content manager for SFCV. He assigns all articles and content, manages the writing staff, and does editing. A member of SFCV from the beginning, Michael holds a Ph.D. in music history from the University of California, Berkeley.