Features

Ever since Miles Davis embraced the idea of a fusion of jazz and other genres 40 years ago, the jazz arena has been a wide-open space for invention and reinvention. As musical boundaries continue to be made irrelevant, it seems absolutely right for Davis’ classic, transgressive album to be revisited amid the splendors it has wrought. Here are five jazz and five world music acts slated for fall performances hereabouts that even a fogey would have trouble resisting.

My criteria for selecting these events for recommendation are that they fall, more or less, in the narrow band between mainstream and the self-consciously “out there,” they are at the low end of the price spectrum, and they have some kind of personal connection or appeal to me.

Lovers of early music have it made in the shade in the Bay Area. There are more offerings every year than you can possibly get to. And all the great musicians who specialize in this music play in several groups, so that keeping them straight can make your head spin. To make things easier, here are five concerts to put on your calendar.

A sample of genre-bending, new-music concerts that will expand your horizons — innovative works at the S.F. Electronic Music Festival, a hot new commission at the Berkeley Symphony, and John Adams double-your-pleasure at the S.F. Symphony.

As San Francisco Opera prepares to open its star-studded fall season on Sept. 10, several smaller companies are trumpeting that this is far from a one-house region. Indeed, the risks that regional companies are taking at a time of economic contraction — I’m being euphemistic here — are cause for rejoicing.

A preview of must-see artists and special events for the upcoming season, by Georgia Rowe.

Musical genres are concepts that may be crawling toward extinction in the new millennium, or so pianist Billy Childs believes. Looking to a more integrated era, he’s positioning his jazz quartet alongside the classically trained Kronos Quartet for the premiere of his commissioned composition, on Sept. 18 at the Monterey Jazz Festival.