Michael Zwiebach

It's dance, it's drumming, it's earsplitting. It's the 2010 International Taiko Festival at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, an event you won't forget.

It's rare that we give a shout out to the UC Berkeley Chamber Chorus in this space, but they're a really good group. This weekend, it performs Morton Feldman's deep, meditative work Rothko Chapel, a reason to attend by itself.

She's not a household name, but Elizabeth Blumenstock is a world class violinist who has been wowing Bay Area early music lovers for years. So when she and the Philharmonia Baroque take on Vivaldi's Four Seasons, it's time to declare a holiday and take the kids.

One the eve of the 25th anniversary of S.F. Conservatory's chamber music master's degree program, Bonnie Hampton talks about her life, the founding of the program, and the value of being present every day.

Fans of Halloween creep-outs may enjoy the screening of the newly restored 1920 silent film classic about murder and the evil within us, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, at Davies Symphony Hall, this Sunday.

Up at UC Davis' Mondavi Center, the coming weekend will see several performances on the theme of “Madness and Music.” The one you want to catch, if you can, is Alarm Will Sound, a genre-bending, electrifying, 20-member band that wears its virtuosity lightly and is game for anything.

Last time out, at the Berkeley Exhibition, Musica Pacifica brought you a breezy, delightful set of folktunes from the British Isles. For its upcoming concert, sponsored by the San Francisco Early Music Society, the group goes in the opposite direction, with music about love in all its oft-dysfunctional splendor. Soprano Dominique Labelle will be on hand.

If there’s one thing Lamplighters Music Theatre knows, it’s Gilbert and Sullivan. So it’s not surprising that the lyricist-composer duo’s latest show — the one spoofing vampire-mania and the Twilight books and movies, not to mention San Francisco’s own Mayor Navin Gruesome — is receiving its premiere from them.

Benjamin Simon leads his student charges, the Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra in a wide ranging program encapsulating pieces from the 16th to the 20th centuries. Super-cellist Michelle Djokic (now with Quartet S.F. and NCCO) solos in Lou Harrison's Suites for Cello and Chamber Orchestra.

Terry Riley is famous in music history for writing In C, one of the most joyous of the seminal works of minimalism. In their upcoming concert, a look back at 20th-century writing for string quartet, the Left Coast Ensemble will go to the dominant, Riley's G Song, originally commissioned by the Kronos Quartet.