It's easy to interview someone who is an interviewer: we just ask her to ask the questions! Orli Shaham is the pianist who'll play Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a theme by Paganini with the SF Symphony at Stern Grove this Sunday. Rachmaninoff, Paganini: you don't need to know much about music to know that this is all about sheer virtuosity and crazy technicity. But Orli also had her radio show, Dial-A-Musician, where she asked her pro friends in classical music to answer questions from the listeners. Orli is the best person to query: she knows the business from the soloist angle. Then she often plays accompanist to her brother, Gil Shaham, the violinist who visits frequently with the SF Symphony. And if she ever wanted to know the point of view of the conductor, she can ask her husband, David Robertson. Robertson leads the St Louis Symphony, and will be guest conductor of the SF Symphony (starting tonight!) to wrap up the 2007-08 program. As Orli says, "he closes the season, and I open the summer."...

Each year, the Symphony organizes a summer festival dedicated to a theme or a composer. Next year sounds pretty intriguing: Schubert/Berg, two Viennese schools, two different styles to contrast and highlight each other. We're looking forward to it. This year, not so much: the festival was dedicated to Brahms, and we were like, blah. Programming Brahms is as exciting as a dinner of mac'n'cheese: the League of American Orchestras computed the most performed pieces of the 2006-07 season, and Brahms pieces rank 1st, 4th, 6th and 8th. We feel, why set up a special extra Brahms session when you can't swing a bow without hitting one of his symphonies. It's not like we're Brahms-deprived and need an extra dose. And yet, we went, twice, and had a great time. ...

Leif-Ove Andsnes should just stop traveling and move here. Looking back only a few years, we see a 2004 performance here with Ian Bostridge, a 2005 concert of a Rachmaninoff piano concerto with MTT/SFS, a solo recital in 2006. He'll be here on Sunday for a recital at Davies and again for the Brahms piano concerto No. 2 next month. Admit it, L.O., you like us, you can't live without us. In fact, we forced......

Well, this sounds like the perfect (and perfectly frightening) holiday entertainment for both kiddies and adults. On December 20, 21, and 22 the San Francisco Symphony will perform the entire Harold Arlen ("Harold, darling -- stand up!") and E.Y. "Yip" Harburg score to The Wizard of Oz right in the comfort and holiday splendor of Davies Symphony Hall. And although Rufus Wainwright will not be there to cover Garland's tunes while sporting a blue......

Why, it's take-your-kid-to-the-symphony day on Sunday (Saturday in San Jose), featuring a performance of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. And here's a little claymation preview: It's so darling, isn't it? Hopefully it'll be as much a blast as the opera for families. More after the jump!...

We caught the symphony on Thursday for a really cool program: Mostly Ives, with a Mendelssohn violin concerto squeezed in between for good measure. Those quicker than us with their opinions found the concerto rather pedestrian. But it's such a delicious yet cloying confection that even under the the jurisdiction of a particularly uninspired interpretation, is still satisfying. And the soloist, 22yo Sergey Khachatryan, did spark some fireworks in the final movement. In the program......

-- Toshio Hirano: Local country music star -- alongside his trusty bassist, Kenan O'Brien -- croons tonight at 9 p.m. at Amnesia; free. -- San Francisco Contemporary Music Players: David Milnes leads this nineteen-member strong group of experimental and orchestral musicians, many of whom are already members of the San Francisco Symphony, Ballet, or Opera Orchestras. Starts at 8 p.m. at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; $10-27. -- Arse Elektronika's Afterparty: Tech-, machine-sex......

It's the magic of music! The San Francisco Symphony comes back to Dolores Park for the fifth consecutive year for a free performance as part of their Summer In The City program. This year, it's kind of Spanish-themed, with Gershwin's Cuban Overture, composer Manuel de Falla's Three Cornered Hat, possibly some tangos, and Ravel's Bolero. Dum-da-da-da bump-bump, dum-da-da-da bump-bump. Before the performance, there's also going to be the symphony petting zoo, where kids get......

It's gotta be hard to perform at the symphony in the winter -- a number of musical sneezes and coughs periodically punctuated Wednesday's San Francisco Symphony movie-themed performances, helmed by guest conductor David Zinman. Get well soon, Wednesday night ticketholders! It was a night of romantic movie themes and orchestral folk music (and one modern piece described in the program as "an aircraft revving for takeoff"), with violinist Hilary Hahn the main star. A poker-faced......

Our friends at the San Francisco Symphony want to give a couple of lucky SFist readers tickets for HK Gruber’s cabaret Frankenstein!! at Davies Symphony Hall. Listen to how crazy this show sounds: The music, played by the traditional orchestra doubling on a battery of toy instruments, ranges from the deceptively tuneful to the mildly berserk, like a Looney Tune score imagined by Mozart. This is not a retelling of the Frankenstein story—the lyrics......

Tonight: at 6:30 there's the reception for the San Jose State University Junior and Senior Industrial Design Show, at the Santana Row Design Within Reach. "The presentation will feature concept projects ranging from product design to interaction design that explore the wide range of possibilities in materials and manufacturing, user analysis, and form development." Saturday; We're singing our little hearts out with the San Francisco Symphony, at one of their sing-along events this weekend.......

Both the San Francisco Symphony and the San Francisco Opera open their new seasons this week. Tomorrow, the symphony kicks it off with a gala, celebrating three anniversaries: Michael Tilson Thomas's, aka MTT, 10th anniversary at the baton, Shostakovich's 100th birthday next year, and the 25th anniversary for Davies Symphony Hall. Yo-Yo Ma at the cello would be our second best choice to perform Shostakovich's first cello concerto for tomorrow's performance. The first choice of......

We were as surprised as anyone when we received media accreditation to attend this Saturday's San Francisco Symphony's Black & White Ball, described as "one of the world's most extravagant black tie parties." We've been hitting Thrift Town, the yoga studio, and the self-tanner in anticipation of tomorrow's event, which runs at the Civic Center from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. We're trying to act all cool about this, but we're super excited to......

Question: where does one go if one were to celebrate the birthday of an Orchestra Conductor? Why the Tosca Cafe, of course! Last Tuesday, San Francisco Symphony conductor Michael Tilson Thomas (that’s MTT for those not in the know) had his 60th birthday party thrown there in his honor by his partner of 30 years, Joshua Robinson. Robinson chose Tosca because Thomas had said he wanted to go someplace “very San Francisco” and what says......