Previews

The Ives Quartet opens its season by previewing the Other Minds Dane Rudhyar Festival that takes place a few weeks from now. They will play Rudhyar's Crisis and Overcoming, (String Quartet No. 2, 1979). Quartets by Haydn and Dvořák complete the program in Occidental, where they are being presented by the Redwood Arts Council. 

An oft-expressed frustration of the new-music scene is that world premieres generate eager support, but repeat performances of these works are far more elusive. Against these odds, Bay Area composer John Adams has managed to defy expectations with his Violin Concerto. The Berkeley Symphony will perform this modern classic with Music Director Joana Carneiro and Grammy-nominated violinist Jennifer Koh on Sept. 23.

Minority groups have the unenviable task of celebrating their uniqueness while demonstrating that they have a great deal in common with everyone. Small wonder, then, that classical music and the LGBTQ community found each other. The partnership displays its accomplishments as the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony opens its season with the ever-popular Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.

When you combine a lot of great Bay Area instrumentalists with a lot of Bay Area institutions of higher learning, you wind up with way more concerts than you can conceivably get to. But if you like your J.S. Bach, here's one you might want to consider.

One of the recent Merola Program stars-in-waiting, Heidi Melton is a soprano with a big career ahead of her singing the big Wagner roles. You can wait to shell out $100 to see her at the Metropolitan Opera, a football field away from your seat, or you can hear her sing in this recital.

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.

There are musicians, there are virtuosos, and then there is that special class of transcendent musician for whom only superlative adjectives suffice. The double bass player Edgar Meyer is just such a performer, hailed as “the best bassist alive” (San Diego Magazine) and “the most remarkable virtuoso in the relatively unchronicled history of his instrument” (The New Yorker). 

Chanticleer’s concerts often take on wide swaths of musical history, and the ensemble’s opening concert of its 2010/2011 season, “Out of This World!” is no exception.

A preview of what’s being called a collaborative live opera, Dieci giorni (or 10 Days), by Bay Area composers Erling Wold, Lisa Scola Prosek, Martha Stoddard, and Davide Verotta, conducted by Stoddard and directed by Jim Cave. The production opens on Sept. 10 for a two-weekend run at Thick House on San Francisco’s Potrero Hill.