You lucky Bay Areans live in a wonderful music community and don't ever take that for granted. You may think I'm talking about the San Francisco Symphony, the Opera, San Francisco Performances and Cal Performances. No, not the big guys and not the big ticket items.

If you haven't spun through our Events Calendar recently, just give a click to "Calendar" (below) and view the many low-cost and free concerts listed, in churches, at the universities. Look closer at the performers listed. If you've been paying any attention at all, you'll recognize the names of highly regarded musicians, prominent recitalists and players with the San Francisco Symphony and our other orchestras, leading performing members of music faculties here. They produce performances that will satisfy right up there with many of the high profile imports.

Folks complain, and justly, of the high cost of tickets (But keep in mind, the most sought-after concert artists cost $70,000 a pop). Many also express alarm because they believe fewer young people are attending classical music performances. Fewer than when, I don't know, but to whatever extent that that is true, do people connect point A (high cost) with point B (fewer young people)?

Well, maybe not the best things in life, but very good things are free--at the weekly Noontime Concerts at St. Patrick's Church and the Bank of America's Giannini Auditorium, at UCSF's Cole Hall, and across the Bay at 12:15 every Wednesday at UC Berkeley's Hertz Hall for performances which are in the main, professional. Not to overlook the Morrison Artist Series at San Francisco State University, monthly programs on Sunday afternoons. And there are performances by students, to be taken seriously, at the state universities and the San Francisco Conservatory.

Most impressive is the phenomenon of concerts in sanctuaries, mostly churches. That development happened so smoothly over the past two decades that most people, I think, assume that it's a venerable tradition. In just about every community in the Bay Area, concerts are being presented in churches, some sponsored by the churches, others by outside presenters. In most cases, the liturgical role of the church plays no part in this, the concerts have no connection with religion but everything to do with the spiritual realm.

The arrangement between church or temple and concert has turned into a symbiotic relationship. Artists and ensembles who can't afford the traditional concert venues that are city-owned, see the sanctuaries as well-located, reasonably priced recital halls, with attractive to lovely ambiance, and fair to good acoustics (if usually on the overly live side). The churches see it as valuable and relevant outreach, not to say some source of revenue. It's win-win.

Eight churches where concerts are presented regularly on a series basis are joined in the consortium, "Concerts in Sanctuaries." In San Francisco, these are: the pioneer (since 1970) Old First Concerts at Old First (Presbyterian) Church, Noe Valley Chamber Music (Noe Valley Ministry Presbyterian Church), St. John's First Saturday Vigils (Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist), Noontime Concerts at St. Patrick's Church (relocated there from Old St. Mary's Cathedral because it is in restoration), Music at St. Mary's Cathedral, and First Fridays at St. Francis Lutheran Church. The Berkeley consortium members are Trinity (United Methodist) Chamber Concerts, and Second Sunday Organ Recitals (St. Mark's Episcopal Church).

The story of the Old St. Mary's/St. Patrick's relationship to Noontime Concerts is probably representative. At first, the church gave no money for the series, but encouraged it because of the outreach it represented. Noontimes Concerts depended on other agencies and grants for support. Now, St. Patrick's waives rental charges, seeing the series as a way to reach beyond its largely Filipino congregation to the daytime business crowd and the Yerba Buena Center across Mission Street. Similarly, as the Noontimes Concerts' founding director Alexander Ivanoff explained, the Bank of America gave them use of its Giannini Auditorium as a regular supplementary venue, seeing the public relations value of the gesture in the wake of its merger with Nations Bank.

Active concert-goers who take advantage of the musical value at admission charges of $10 or less or a voluntary contribution are equally familiar with the several churches that do not host series but rent their facilities. This happens a lot at Berkeley's First Congregational Church, a now famous concert venue, and significantly at San Francisco's St. Ignatius Church. All around the Bay this is happening--in Belvedere, where St. Stephen's Episcopal Church serves as home to the American Bach Soloists, in Palo Alto's First United Methodist Church where the New Century Chamber and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestras play regularly, and so on, in community after community, church after church.. It really is a new age and part of the remarkable movement of the religious institutions' reaching out and serving the community.

If you haven't tried it, you might just be surprised to sit with the noontime crowds filling St. Patrick's on their lunch breaks, or packing Hertz Hall on the Berkeley campus. An article last weekend about construction of the Philadelphia Orchestra's new hall noted that in a 1992 study, San Francisco apparently showed up with the highest number of seats in performing arts facilities per million residents, 8,400, compared with New York's 6,000. I doubt that survey includes religious sanctuaries as performing spaces. We do have a rich and, thanks to these church venues and excellent resident artists, a very affordable musical life.

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