Previews

Early music has considerable postmodern appeal for recorder virtuoso Piers Adams and his group, Red Priest. The group's long-awaited local stop is set as a Halloween-flavored concert on Oct. 28. Arrayed in colorful outfits that evoke olden days and issuing albums with tongue-in-cheek titles, like Red Priest, has effectively marketed itself as an unlikely team of English early-music all-stars.

Who was Emily Dickinson? Popular portrayals cast the famed 19th-century poet as an eccentric recluse, a shadowy Woman in White. But “that image seems to be a fabrication, and when you go further into the story or into her work, an entirely different character emerges,” says Kathryn Roszak of Danse Lumière, which stages “Pensive Spring: A Portrait of Emily Dickinson” Oct. 10 and 19 as part of Berkeley Chamber Performances.

When I watched Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, I waited to hear an iconic line to match the first film’s “Greed is good.” Gordon Gekko got teary, and I lost hope — until Bretton James (played by Josh Brolin) delivered the aphorism “Every man should have a mentor and a protégé.” Ironically, it is the completely well-intentioned San Francisco Academy Orchestra (SFAO) that acts on this fortune-cookie advice in its season-opening concert.

Lagging economy or not, some of the Bay Area’s local opera companies are taking risks. West Bay Opera is taking the lead and going for its whiskers with an upcoming production of Verdi’s La forza del destino . General Director José Luis Moscovich said of the undertaking, “This is not an opera for the faint of heart.”

Three-hundred-plus years is a long time to wait for a second performance, especially if the work in question is, according to Warren Stewart, director of Magnificat Baroque, “an exceptional piece” from a time when English opera was flourishing. The good news is that the upcoming performances of John Blow’s Venus and Adonis (2nd version) vest-pocket opera should prove it was well worth the wait.

Peter Pastreich agrees with those who call the Bay Area’s prized Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra “America’s leading period-instrument ensemble.” But if you asked concert presenters at top international venues like London’s Barbican Centre to name the really important orchestras, “we might not be on that list,” says Pastreich, the esteemed arts executive who became the PBO’s executive director last spring.

Other Minds and Sarah Cahill are curating this festival to a man who was the inspiration and example for many other American “maverick” composers, including Henry Cowell, Carl Ruggles, John Cage, and Lou Harrison. Dane Rhudyar is definitely an original, someone whose music will open your ears — and not in a trivial way.

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.