San Francisco Classical Voice

Garden of Memory
Garden of Memory, founded in 1996, amounts to a one-day festival of new or recent music, performed by some of the Bay Area's best new-music specialists and sponsored by New Music Bay Area. This year's installment features a long list of performers and composers, including Sarah Cahill, the Cornelius Cardew Choir, Terry Reilly, Paul Dresher, Krystina Bobrowski and Karen Stackpole of the "complex sound-generating entity" Vorticella, Amy X. Neuburg, Ogog, Luciano Chessa, and many more. If that lineup isn't enough for you, the venue is Julia Morgan's magnificent and labyrinthine Chapel of the Chimes, an Oakland columbarium, so the event provides a feast for both the ears and the eyes. June 21, 5-9 p.m., Chapel of the Chimes, Oakland, $5-$10, (415) 563-6355, ext. 3, listings@newmusicbayarea.org, www.gardenofmemory.com. (L.H.)

Summer Early Music and Dance Workshops
Early music fans can immerse themselves in the music for a week at a time at these popular summer workshops. Best of all, many of the evening concerts are open to the public. On June 20, the expert faculty of the Baroque Workshop will play a concert titled "The Elegance of the French Baroque." On June 27 during the medieval/Renaissane workshop, the outstanding duo of soprano Catherine Webster and lutist David Taylor will perform a concert of lute settings of Elizabethan poetry titled "In a Garden So Green." June 20 and June 27, 7:30 p.m., Angelico Hall, Dominican University, San Rafael, $10-$15. The Baroque Music and Dance Workshop runs through June 24; the Medieval and Renaissance Workshop runs June 25 to July 1; and the Recorder Workshop happens July 16 to 22, all three at Dominican University, San Rafael, $410 (tuition); the Music Discovery Workshop for kids runs July 30 to August 4 at the Crowden School, Berkeley, $315 (tuition); (510) 528-1725, www.sfems.org/workshops.htm. (M.B.)

Berkeley Symphony Orchestra
The Berkeley Symphony concludes its season with a typical program: the Schumann symphony cycle is wrapped up with a performance of his Symphony No. 2; noted Wagernian soprano Jane Eaglen sings arias from Mozart's Don Giovanni and, more unusually, Alban Berg's Seven Early Songs; while the new music front is upheld with Edmund Campion's Practice. The latter is written for orchestra plus a MIDI keyboard controlling a Macintosh computer running specially programmed software. According to the composer, the work's aesthetic foundations are to be found in spectral music, a technique and approach on which composers such as Kaija Saariaho (L'amour de loin) draw. June 21, 8 p.m., Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley, $10-$54, (510) 841-2800, www.berkeleysymphony.org. (L.H.)

Liszt's Dante Symphony
The San Francisco Symphony's June Festival concludes with "illustrated" performances of Liszt's Dante Symphony, in two distinctly different presentations. Conductor James Conlon is honoring Liszt's concept of combining the music with a depiction of scenes from Dante's Divine Comedy — projections will replace the actual display of large paintings on the stage that happened a century and a half ago. The first concert, on Thursday, will add Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini to the Liszt. On the following day, a Conlon lecture about the Liszt piece, with the orchestra's participation, begins at 6:30 p.m., and the Dante Symphony is performed in the second half. (No Tchaikovsky on Friday.) June 22, 8 p.m. (preceded by a free "Inside Music" talk by Conlon at 7 p.m.); June 23, 6:30 p.m., Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, $35-$107, (415) 864-6000, www.sfsymphony.org. (J.G.)

Happy End
ACT presents the West Coast premiere of Happy End, a musical comedy written by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill in Berlin in 1929, to take advantage of the great success of The Threepenny Opera (see the review). Set in a mythical gangland, supposedly Chicago on the cusp of the Roaring Twenties, Happy End follows the struggle of the passionate Salvation Army lieutenant Lillian Holiday to save the soul of down-and-out mobster Bill Cracker, whose gang is led by the mysterious Lady in Grey (also known as "The Fly"). Through July 16, Geary Theater, San Francisco, $25-$70.

ACT is also sponsoring a series of public discussions about its current production, beginning with a presentation by Stanford University's Stephen Hinton and Herbert Lindenberger. ACT artistic director Carey Perloff will moderate the event. June 20, 9:30 p.m., Geary Theater, San Francisco, free. Audience exchange discussion, June 28, 4:30 p.m., Geary Theater, free, (415) 749-2ACT, www.act-sf.org. (J.G.)

Summer Opera Offerings
As an authentic repertoire freak, I am always most interested in fresh musical experiences. So the usual excites my appetites most, and this summer offers numerous temptations. San Francisco Opera's summer season presents Puccini's Madama Butterfly (remaining performances: June 21 and 25) — see the review. Plus there's Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro (June 20, 24, 27, 29, and 30) (see review). And for the connoisseur, the jewel of the summer is Tchaikovsky's Maid of Orleans, his Joan of Arc opera based on Schiller's play (June 28). Written after Eugene Onegin, Swan Lake, the first four Symphonies, and the First Piano Concerto, Tchaikovsky's Maid has only begun to creep into the international repertory, although it contains one of his most beautiful arias, Joan's "Adieu, forêts," which mezzo-soprano Dolora Zajick sings in the title role. Plus baritone Rod Gilfry as Lionel (see review).Precise times and ticket prices are available at (415) 864-3330 or www.sfopera.com. (H.T.)

Free Opera in Dolores Park
San Francisco Opera Music Director Donald Runnicles conducts a free outdoor concert featuring singers from the company's "Return of the Divas" summer season — Dolora Zajick (Joan of Arc in Maid of Orleans) and Ruth Ann Swenson (the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro), as well as Twyla Robinson (who shares the role of the Countess with Swenson), and Adler Fellow Rhoslyn Jones. July 1, 2 p.m., Dolores Park (18th and Dolores streets), San Francisco, free, (415) 861-4008, www.sfopera.com. (J.G.)

Claycomb's Creative Excess
San Francisco audiences, well familiar with soprano Laura Claycomb's work (in the Merola Program, as Zerbinetta in such performances as the S.F. Opera's memorable Ariadne auf Naxos), expect a varied, rich program at her recitals, but this one takes the cake. Accompanied by Peter Grunberg, cellist Nina Kotova, and guitarist Marc Teicholz, Claycomb will perform songs by Vivaldi, Handel, Debussy, Poulenc; De Falla's 7 canciones populares españolas; Kotova's Lyrica Suite (to poems by Andrey Belyi); Chausson's Le colibri; Walton's Anon. in Love; Previn's four songs to poems by Toni Morrison ... and more and — so help me — she is promising "at least three encores"! June 25, 2 p.m., Legion of Honor, San Francisco, $33-$38, www.chambermusicsf.org. (J.G.)

Golden Gate International Children's Choral Festival
Piedmont Choirs hosts a weeklong festival of children's choirs, which draws young singers from around the world. This year choirs are coming from China, Austria, Benin, and throughout the U.S. June 30, 8 p.m., Old First Church, San Francisco, $12-$15. (Community concerts also take place June 28, 7:30 p.m., Unitarian Universalist Church, Kensington; June 29, 7:30 p.m., St. Joseph's Basilica, Alameda; and July 1 at Skyline High School, Oakland. (510) 547-4441, www.piedmontchoirs.org/festival.lasso (M.B.)

Sonos Handbell Ensemble's Textures
This concert features a wide-ranging mix of American and Asian music from William Billings' Continental Harmony, plus selections from Sonos' "American Tints" program, and a number of new works from the just-recorded CD (due out in the fall). The concert is in collaboration with the Young Musicians Program, under the direction of Sonos Artistic Director James Meredith. June 23, 8 p.m., free, Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley, (510) 531-4780, www.sonos.org. (J.G.)

Ethnic Dance Festival Finale
The last of three event-packed, sold-out weekends is coming up for the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival's 2006 season. Participants include the Diamano Coura West African Dance Company, performing a masked dance of the Baga people of Guinea; the Charya Burt Cambodian Dance Company, honoring Khmer ancestors in a 1,000-year-old tradition; the Chinese American International School Dance Troupe, featuring a piece from Inner Mongolia, inspired by the movements of eagles and horses; the Arenas Dance Company, with Dos Aguas, a suite of Afro-Cuban dances; and much more. June 24, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m.; June 25, 2 p.m.; Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, $22-$36, (415) 392-4400, www.cityboxoffice.com. (J.G.)