Jason Victor Serinus

When it comes to classical music and opera, we enlightened ones are supposed to be color-blind. Regardless of our race, the racial characteristics of singers and musicians are not supposed to matter … some of the time.

This is a remarkable CD. At first glance, its pairing of Ambrose Field’s live and studio electronics with the voice of former Hilliard Ensemble tenor John Potter singing the music of Guillaume Dufay (1397-1474) may seem like an update of Officium, the best-selling ECM early music recording from 1994 that partnered Jan Garbarek’s distinctive saxophone with the voices of the Hilliard Ensemble.

Quality is a given when it comes to the Golden Gate Men’s Chorus (GGMC). First and foremost, its director for the last 13 years has been Joseph Jennings, longtime music director of Chanticleer.

Pianist Joel Fan, a longtime member of Yo-Yo Ma’s genre-busting Silk Road Ensemble, has just released West of the Sun: Music of the Americas.

Twenty minutes after the scheduled beginning of San Francisco Lyric Opera’s matinee performance of Verdi’s Rigoletto, General Manager Bob Scher stepped before the Cowell Theater curtain to speak. Thank God, the delay was due, not to a last-minute indisposition, but to the late, “I’m sure she’ll be here any minute,” arrival of a violinist.

Nymphs and shepherds, unite! Georg Friedrich Händel’s path to pastoral bliss beckons in two distinct directions.

There are moments when a musical performance is so carefully conceived or so sublimely delivered that all you can do is surrender to the beauty of it and express gratitude for being alive.