Previews

The San Francisco Bay Area is a little foretaste of chorus heaven. Choruses flourish here, and their activities are constant. So what makes a person want to found another chorus? In the case of the International Orange Chorale of San Francisco, it’s as simple as wanting to choose your friends.

To hear pianist (and longtime SFCV contributor) Jerry Kuderna tell it, his upcoming concert at Trinity Chapel in Berkeley on June 6 was an extreme example of serendipity. There he was, innocently practicing music of the Catalan composer Federico Mompou, “the first Spanish composer who really got into my system,” he says.

The San Francisco Renaissance Voices, founded in 2004, is an ensemble dedicated to singing lesser-known and rarely performed early music, and this June they'll do just that. Their coming run of "The Darkness and The Dawn" (on June 13, 14, and 21) is an exploration of the Italian Renaissance, and the final installment of "The Polyphony Project," which explored the five major Renaissance schools.

La traviata, which opens June 13 in San Francisco Opera’s summer-season run, is a daunting opera for the soprano performing the role of Violetta Valery.

You might assume, from its Latin name Chora Nova, that it specializes in early music, but that’s far from the truth, as its upcoming concerts this week demonstrate. Carl Orff’s Catulli Carmina (Song of Catullus) does have Latin words, though its musical style is familiar from the composer’s Carmina Burana.

The idea that numerical properties underlie music has interested people since at least the Middle Ages.

Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy is living up the "lucky" part of his name as the world celebrates his 200th birthday. Were he alive, he might revel in the good fortune of being well honored by Vance George and the San Francisco State Chamber Singers.

Chatting with subscribers who have been with her for all of her ensemble’s 17 seasons, Barbara Day Turner had her mission confirmed. “They’re noting how much being constantly exposed to different things has changed how they listen to music,” Turner reports.

America can’t get enough of Mason Bates, the young alchemist who blends the sonority of traditional ensembles like the symphony orchestra with the limitless possibilities of computer-generated “electronica.” It’s almost as if we’ve been waiting for just such a sorcerer to put a bit of groove in our Grieg, to mix up our Messien, to bring something fresh and transformational to the concert hall.