Features

It’s not just about the big names. When the 53rd Monterey Jazz Festival swings into action on Friday, Sept. 17, ten gifted high school–age ensembles will feature prominently on the grounds and main arena stages. Their appearances constitute but one aspect of a comprehensive jazz education program.

Ask enough of your neighbors, and you’ll find one or two at least who are involved in a chorus somewhere. There are hundreds of local groups, if you count church choirs, and a goodly number even if you don’t. Bay Area choral aficionados have a lot to choose from, but the concerts listed here are hugely appealing, even if you don’t sing in the shower yourself.

Chamber music is everything from traditional string quartets to So Percussion to small orchestras. You would need an entire iPhone app linked to the Classical Voice calendar to keep track of all the chamber music events in the Bay Area. Instead of an app, we have an op: Michelle Dulak Thomson, SFCV’s longtime string quartet maven, who gives you the inside scoop on five hot small ensembles playing here this fall.

Ever since Miles Davis embraced the idea of a fusion of jazz and other genres 40 years ago, the jazz arena has been a wide-open space for invention and reinvention. As musical boundaries continue to be made irrelevant, it seems absolutely right for Davis’ classic, transgressive album to be revisited amid the splendors it has wrought. Here are five jazz and five world music acts slated for fall performances hereabouts that even a fogey would have trouble resisting.

My criteria for selecting these events for recommendation are that they fall, more or less, in the narrow band between mainstream and the self-consciously “out there,” they are at the low end of the price spectrum, and they have some kind of personal connection or appeal to me.

Lovers of early music have it made in the shade in the Bay Area. There are more offerings every year than you can possibly get to. And all the great musicians who specialize in this music play in several groups, so that keeping them straight can make your head spin. To make things easier, here are five concerts to put on your calendar.

A sample of genre-bending, new-music concerts that will expand your horizons — innovative works at the S.F. Electronic Music Festival, a hot new commission at the Berkeley Symphony, and John Adams double-your-pleasure at the S.F. Symphony.