Jason Victor Serinus

Time for full disclosure. As much as I admire the Oakland East Bay Symphony, I asked to review its season opener, "A Grand Opening: Beethoven and Bernstein," for one specific reason: to have the opportunity to reassess the artistry of soprano Hope Briggs.

To some, John Cage is a joy guide, a trickster, a brilliant confounder of established expectations. To others he is a constantly vexing presence: an incontrovertibly original iconoclast who changed the course of modern composition by giving artists permission to do any one of a number of things at any given time.

Is there a conspiracy here? After enjoying the mellifluous playing of the Talich String Quartet at the opening concert of Music at Kohl’s silver anniversary season, it’s hard to believe that people aren’t beating down the doors of Burlingame’s Kohl Mansion to get in.

Many observers, myself included, tend to put Philip Glass in an uncomfortable box: He writes repetitive drones, he's been writing the same thing over and over for more than 35 years, he can't compose a melody worth a hill of beans, what was revolutionary in his earlier music now seems dated, and so on.

Oakland Opera Theater’s The Turn of the Screw is both a triumph of spirit and a stumbling of conception.

I thought I knew Olga Borodina’s voice pretty well. But then I discovered myself seated in second row center of Zellerbach Hall. Sitting that close to the Russian mezzo, the glories of her instrument were nigh overwhelming. Even as she was on the mend from the audible and visible affects of bronchitis, Borodina’s voice radiated magnificence.

If every piece of architecture had its own inherent sound, the church of Mission San Juan Bautista would be heard for miles. The relatively high-ceilinged structure (long and narrow, made of wood and plaster, and primitively painted), whose interior was completed in 1817, creates a resounding acoustic like none other I've experienced.

If thoughts of nonprofessional community choruses make you cringe, rest assured: The San Francisco Choral Society is something else.

You'd think that nothing could steal the thunder from the likes of Frederica von Stade, Sir James and Lady Jeanne Galway, and the Russian National Orchestra. But Friday the 13th brought a decidedly unmusical close to Festival del Sole's opening night in Napa.

Hundreds of thousands, millions, perhaps billions of people around the globe, had just taken the seven-point Live Earth Pledge to do their part to avert global warming. But in Walnut Creek on Saturday night, at the Dean Lesher Center for the Arts, it was business as usual.