Tomorrow night, under the auspices of SF Performances at Herbst Theater, the Guarneri Quartet will play its last concert in San Francisco: they're hanging up their instruments after fourty-five years of service. If that weren't reason enough to go see them one last time --they pretty much define string quartet-- they do present an exciting program. They may have one foot in retirement, but they'll still play the Mendelssohn Octet and the exciting Bay Area premiere of Derek Bermel's Passing Through....

One of the most effervescent, most joyously infectious things we heard last year, was Ian Bostridge and Kate Royal in a duet from Handel's Acis and Galatea, Happy We (excerpt here). We streamed it on-line from the BBC-Proms coverage, and it made us so fuzzy inside, that if it were legal, we totally would have installed a streaming audio capture software to make a copy on our computer (that and, oh say, John Adams' Dr......

We caught Phil Setzer, the violinist for the Emerson String Quartet, being driven down between performances in Santa Barbara and Orange County. We hope it was in a stretch limo, as these guys have won eight Grammy awards and critical acclaim everywhere they go. They are the only chamber music group to ever win a best classical album grammy, and they even got two. So they better travel like the rock stars they are. They'll......

Someone told us a story of a famous pianist who believed in bringing culture to the people, and went to a factory in Italy to give a lecture in front of a piano. He started to talk about Schoenberg, and after a few minutes, a voice rose from the audience: "Shut up, and play!" Ok, he said, and sat down at the piano, playing the Schoenberg piece. The voice rose again: "Rather, talk!" András......

As a prelude to the big event, the world premiere of Appomattox next Friday at the opera house, composer Philip Glass was hosting a night of chamber music at Herbst Theater last night. It was also the opening concert for SF Performances's 28th season (the official Dolce Vita-themed kick-off Gala happens October 12th). We are as excited as anyone about the upcoming opera, so we were pleased to see Glass not only introduce the......

The death of classical music is dead. We see evidence of it right here in the challenging, modern programing of the SF Symphony which fills Davies nightly. MTT opens yet another world premiere next month with Robin Holloway's Fourth Concerto for Orchestra and we are getting ready for the US premiere of John Adams A Flowering Tree, his follow-up opera to the hugely successful Dr Atomic. We see proof of it in the downloads of......

Is it wrong that when we saw the movie Koyaanisqatsi, about not despoiling the earth, we left the theater thinking, "wow, San Francisco would be a great city to live in!" Well, San Francisco is a great city to live in, not the least of which being that we're hosting a live performance of the Qatsi Trilogy this weekend. SF Performances is screening all three Qatsi movies -- Koyaanisqatsi (Life Out Of Balance) tonight, Powaqatsi (Life In Transformation) on Saturday and Naqoyqatsi (Life As War) on Sunday -- with live accompaniment of the famous Philip Glass score by the eponymously-named Philip Glass Ensemble. Phillip Glass himself is also in town, and will be speaking on Saturday afternoon at Herbst Theater. The screenings all take place in Symphony Hall -- buy tickets here. Or save yourself some money and buy a Glass Pass, all three movies plus Glass speaking. Glass Pass, ha. ...