Reviews

Leta Miller's book Music and Politics does what few histories or musicological studies do: offers a lively and entertaining read dealing with San Francisco's history of classical music.

A revered San Francisco institution inhabits the Difficult Music Zone, with works new and really old, but all of them challenging to ear and mind.

A canny pianist takes listeners on a rewarding journey through Bachtian fields on a CD that is at once playful and arresting.

It’s “Thomas Adès Time” in the Bay Area, as the composer/pianist and the Calder Quartet perform a few of his works, ranging from lyrical and playful to formidably complex.

Bluegrass, banjos, and country-and-western play to happy multitudes in Golden Gate Park.

Symphony Silicon Valley launches its season on a bright note, with a Cuban-inspired work by David Amram and an outer-space adventure.

A little over a year after handsome Vittorio Grigolo turned heads and hearts with his first album, The Italian Tenor, he brings us Arrivederci. It's a demonstration of how the 31-year-old tenor’s god given instrument has naturally darkened on top while retaining its beauty.

Each work on the S.F. Symphony program, conducted with tremendous verve by MTT, came across splendidly, with Thomas Adès’ Polaris, radiating light and emerging as the evening’s high point

Three faculty members of the S.F. Conservatory stage a sumptuous, full-course meal, whipped up by Dvořák, Bach, Schoenberg, and Rachmaninov.

A cantata of fen and flood by Patrick Hadley puts one by Ralph Vaughan Williams in the shade.