Previews

For some it will be an opportunity to hear bass John Relyea, and soprano Patricia Racette, who is one of the artists who could capture my attention even if she was only singing the phone book. But the July 4 concert at Stern Grove with the San Francisco Opera will also present a program of American operatic classics, which are rare on the world's stages.

For many of us, classical music means the deep, melodious sounds created by the strings of a violin or the delicate, dulcet sound of light, nimble fingers swiftly climbing up and down the keys of a piano. These are exactly the conventional notions that the Los Angeles Electric 8 has passionately defied since 2007.

The San Francisco Boys Chorus presents its spring concert this weekend at Mission Dolores, a great venue, where the guys will give you a little of everything they do.

Every year, New Music Bay Area observes the summer solstice with a day of music at Oakland's Chapel of the Chimes. Audience members just walk through and discover different musical groups playing in various areas throughout the building and grounds. Because of the way Julia Morgan designed the Chapel, you don't really hear the other musicians until you're right in front of them. It's kind of like a musical maze.

Twenty-five pieces by 25 composers: That's the formula behind the equation for San Francisco Choral Artists’ 25th anniversary concert, titled “25 X 25.”

It’s one of the world’s more prestigious competitions for young musicians, and it takes place right here in San Francisco. The Irving M. Klein International String Competition, held annually on the campus of San Francisco State University, attracts the crème de la crème of string players, ages 15 to 23, for two days of intensive music-making.

Pink Martini, the self-described “house band of the United Nations,” is back for their third tour of duty with the San Francisco Symphony. The eclectic mix of world music and pop is hip on its own, but their arrangements, already for an expanded band, make them a great fit for an orchestra.

I'm not normally one to recommend complete sets of anything. The complete choral works of Samuel Barber, an odyssey that Voices of Musica Sacra and their music director, John Kendall Bailey, undertake beginning this weekend, is a bit different. The real reason to seek out these concerts is that you probably haven't heard most of the works that are being given a rare outing here.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and apparently more than one way to pick a guitar. At the San Francisco Guitar Summit, guitarists will perform works that pick, strum, bend, scrape, soothe, and electrify the senses, in almost the widest range of musical styles possible in one evening. From classical to world fusion, this concert provokes new ideas of what the guitar is all about.

This is not your grandmother’s chamber music.

Sure, there are some similarities. When the Double Duo, the newest chamber music grouping of the Paul Dresher Ensemble, takes the stage at Old First Concerts on June 4 and 6, you’ll see concerts designed to explore both the range of conventional instruments doing unconventional pieces and the combination of conventional and unconventional instruments.