Jeff Dunn

A recent BluePrint concert offered a disconcerting, echoing trope in a major new work offered at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, just one piece in a series of experimental works that impressed.

The latest release from the Bay Brass, an ensemble made up of some of the best musicians in the S.F. Symphony, Ballet, and Opera orchestras offers attractive compositions and more than belies prejudices often conjured up by brass ensembles, with excellent playing and first rate sonics.

The S.F. Symphony and Anne Sofie von Otter dressed up their offerings with immensely enjoyable performances of works by Hindemith, Brahms, and a panoply of Scandinavian composers.

Three interpreters at Oakland East Bay Symphony's concert on Friday transformed composers’ dreams into art worthy of both praise and concern.

Paul Bowles, once described as “famous for not being famous,” was an allusive artist of elusive categorization. On Saturday, Nicole Paiement’s Blue Print project began its ninth season, with a intriguing focus on Bowles’ music.

Our very own San Francisco Symphony have come up with an excellent performance of the most famous symphony of them all. This release is worth making some sublime noise about.

When lauded strangeness becomes vastly public, it may herald a change of fashion. Such seem to be Simone Dinnerstein’s Bach interpretations, which bring elements of romanticism back into baroque performance practice. Bach: A Strange Beauty is will not disappoint her new-found fans, nor will it convince her detractors.

Circus Maximus is a scream, an impressive piece of workmanship, if a debatable work for the ages. In its latest incarnation as a high-definition Blu-ray disk, it’s a first-class device for showing off your latest surround-sound system.

What better way to usher in a new year than to have fun with that funmost of instruments, the clarinet? Those who love William Bolcom’s Graceful Ghost reinvention of ragtime will take instantly to the first four cuts of this new Harmonia Mundi release.

Vision and a certain sense of rightness made for an exceptional evening at last Wednesday’s San Francisco Symphony subscription concert: Three masters, Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, guest violinist Gil Shaham, and principal trumpet Mark Inouye, provided hole-in-one performances.