Michael Zwiebach

The Red Poppy Art House is a nice space for music and Charith Premawardhana and Classical Revolution have done a great job presenting young and inspiring acts there. This week, they bring in another strong group of musicians, the Vinca Quartet.

Ask enough of your neighbors, and you’ll find one or two at least who are involved in a chorus somewhere. There are hundreds of local groups, if you count church choirs, and a goodly number even if you don’t. Bay Area choral aficionados have a lot to choose from, but the concerts listed here are hugely appealing, even if you don’t sing in the shower yourself.

Terry Riley, one of the most inspiring of the so-called minimalist composers, will be playing piano at the Berkeley Art Museum, lighting up the museum's late night hours, with an informal concert. At 75, this pioneer has still got plenty of gas left in the tank.

Superb violinist Ian Swensen may be more self-effacing than his better-known contemporaries, but that's all to the advantage of San Francisco Conservatory students, who will get to play with him in a rare performance of the French Romantic Ernst Chausson's Concerto.

Michael Kaiser, artistic head of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, is one of the more respected artistic administrators in America, as well as an inspiring speaker who is bullish on the arts. Here he talks with SFCV about the arts in crisis and the future of classical music.

San José-based Lyric Theater is taking a chance on a San Francisco venue: the Southside Theater at Fort Mason. They’re bringing a forgotten operetta, Leo Fall’s The Dollar Princess, which was a hit on Broadway in 1909 in an English revision.

New music collective sfSound comes to Old First Concerts this week. For all you adventurers out there who like an intellectual challenge, this is the antidote to the easy listening summer pops season you’ve been waiting for.

Fremont Opera opens its La traviata next weekend. Local they may be, but they’ve scored with their Violetta: Danielle Talamantes, an up-and-comer slated to understudy at the Metropolitan Opera this season. 

For years now it’s been obvious that the classical orchestral concert is in need of some rethinking for modern audiences. And no one has been more out in front of this issue than the S.F. Chamber Orchestra, which began its popularizing mission by giving all its concerts away for free. Its current music director, Ben Simon, has gone the full monty, trying out a variety of new ideas. Simon’s new venture, “You Gotta Hear This” at the Rrazz Room in S.F. is an expansion on his original ideas.

Composer and SFCV contributor Matthew Cmiel and director/ choreographer Wolfgang Thompson have put together an evening of music and words that sounds exciting in its mix of different approaches with works ranging from a choreographic work that uses Anne Sexton’s poems as a score, and a staging of a work by Elliott Carter.