We heard of Leila Josefowicz for the first time after she won a MacArthur Genius Grant in 2008. "Out of blue, $500,000, no strings," declares the fellowship's page. But! Some strings were attached, because Leila received the prize for playing the violin. (Har.) Which she does play, with burning intensity. (Don't believe us? Check this out.) more ›

A quote about cellist Alisa Weilerstein: "She's young, accomplished, whip-smart and attractive, so why don't we hate her?" To make it even more difficult to say anything bad about her, just after we chatted with her this past October, she participated in an anti-prop 8 fund raiser in San Francisco. That did not turn out so well, but thanks for trying, Alisa! We also talked to her before she came out of the diabetic closet and announced a partnership with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. She's quite juvenile herself, being only twenty-six, and having been on stage since the age of four. So we won't have the goods on that diabetes gig, but Joshua Kosman does, and if you're looking for a role model for the fight against this disease, she's your girl. more ›

Hilary Hahn has been a celebrated violinist for so long, you'd forget she hasn't even turned 30! We (as in our favorite philistine) caught her last time around when she was playing the Korngold violin concerto, and loved her. She's back in a more familiar piece, the Tchaikovsky concerto in D major, starting tomorrow night. How's that for some perfectly festive holidays! more ›

Sometimes, conducting modern music is like driving a car that was designed with 12 wheels, but such that only one can touch the ground at any time. Some kind of tricky balancing act, it gets you somewhere but tensely, with your muscles clenched. And then, the Dvorak New World Symphony is like stepping off that contraption into a mercedes convertible, lifting the top down, stepping on the pedal, and wham, there comes the acceleration pushing you into the plush leather, the wind blowing on your face and the rush of blood to your groin: just plain exhilaration. The snobs will sneer at the bourgeois pleasures, but they're so thoroughly enjoyable. The Summer Series of the SF Symphony is all about giving the audience such easy satisfaction. The program we attended, in addition to the New World Symphony, included a Beethoven piano concerto No. 5, and a Slavonic Dance, again by Dvorak. Easy pleasures don't mean it's dumbed down: those are famous pieces for sure, and no feather will be ruffled the wrong way by the program, but these are still important works, and highly difficult to perform. more ›

Even though James Gaffigan's only 27 years old, he is running the SF Symphony Summer series. We wanted to know him better, and he granted us an interview: more ›