Michael Zwiebach

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. 

When you combine a lot of great Bay Area instrumentalists with a lot of Bay Area institutions of higher learning, you wind up with way more concerts than you can conceivably get to. But if you like your J.S. Bach, here's one you might want to consider.

One of the recent Merola Program stars-in-waiting, Heidi Melton is a soprano with a big career ahead of her singing the big Wagner roles. You can wait to shell out $100 to see her at the Metropolitan Opera, a football field away from your seat, or you can hear her sing in this recital.

The Red Poppy Art House is a nice space for music and Charith Premawardhana and Classical Revolution have done a great job presenting young and inspiring acts there. This week, they bring in another strong group of musicians, the Vinca Quartet.

Ask enough of your neighbors, and you’ll find one or two at least who are involved in a chorus somewhere. There are hundreds of local groups, if you count church choirs, and a goodly number even if you don’t. Bay Area choral aficionados have a lot to choose from, but the concerts listed here are hugely appealing, even if you don’t sing in the shower yourself.

Terry Riley, one of the most inspiring of the so-called minimalist composers, will be playing piano at the Berkeley Art Museum, lighting up the museum's late night hours, with an informal concert. At 75, this pioneer has still got plenty of gas left in the tank.

Superb violinist Ian Swensen may be more self-effacing than his better-known contemporaries, but that's all to the advantage of San Francisco Conservatory students, who will get to play with him in a rare performance of the French Romantic Ernst Chausson's Concerto.

Michael Kaiser, artistic head of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, is one of the more respected artistic administrators in America, as well as an inspiring speaker who is bullish on the arts. Here he talks with SFCV about the arts in crisis and the future of classical music.

San José-based Lyric Theater is taking a chance on a San Francisco venue: the Southside Theater at Fort Mason. They’re bringing a forgotten operetta, Leo Fall’s The Dollar Princess, which was a hit on Broadway in 1909 in an English revision.