Previews

A respected church music director is being celebrated for his six decades of excellence and inspiration.

Nicola Luisotti takes the San Francisco Opera Orchestra across the Bay Bridge, to Cal Performances on Oct. 28 and talks candidly about his passion for conducting the orchestra.

The Cashore Marionettes will come to life at Cal Performances on Oct. 23. They are in no way a simple puppet show, but characters alive on stage.

The first Chinese classical guitarist to launch an international career, Xuefei Yang was so accomplished as a teen that John Williams gave two of his own Smallman guitars to the Beijing Conservatory so she would have excellent instruments to play.

The men's choir Clerestory, originally a splinter group from Chanticleer, is one of the less-known Bay Area treasures. If you've never looked in on them, here is a wonderful-sounding program about the music of Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, presented in conjunction with Humanities West's seminar weekend.

Should anyone not be tired of Farinelli’s repertoire after the Philharmonia Baroque set, here is Philippe Jaroussky, among the most recent of the countertenor superstars, singing Handel and Vivaldi arias with Jeannette Sorrell’s Cleveland-based ensemble Apollo’s Fire.

“Body music is the oldest music,” says International Body Music Festival (IBMF) Founder Keith Terry. His fourth annual festival, features six days filled with over 20 presentations of traditional and contemporary Body Music styles from all over the world.

Ensemble Caprice’s program for the San Francisco Early Music Society focuses on the Gypsies, surveying three centuries’ worth of Gypsy-influenced “classical” music.

The South Bay's major premiere of the season is a new work by the leading Argentinian-born composer Osvaldo Golijov, performed by the St. Lawrence String Quartet in the Stanford Lively Arts series.

The Cypress String Quartet is bringing in renowned cellist Gary Hoffman to help them play Schubert's masterpiece, the String Quintet in C Major.