*MUSIC: You know that song at the end of Juno, "Anyone Else But You"? The one Ellen Page and Michael Cera sing to one another? And it's all cute and sad? Well,it was co-written and originally recorded by Kimya Dawson, former half of the Moldy Peaches, and she's over in the East Bay tonight at 924 Gilman. She performs along with Angelo Spencer at this all-ages show. (No booze allowed, by the way.) .......

Okay, before you ask, this is not the much-beloved Our Locals On Reality TV Project Runway recap, this is the SFist Symphony review -- we'll explain later in the post. We had a little San Francisco Polyphony of our own on our way to the SF Symphony concert yesterday night to see Gyorgy Ligeti's shimmerily-dissonant orchestral piece of the same name -- the driver of our MUNI bus finally got fed up with people sneaking......

Wow, it feels like just yesterday that we posted something about the Symphony's Chinese New Year's concert for last year's Year of the Pig! Well, it's now the Year of the Rat, and the orchestra's raring to go! Last year's 14 year old solo pianist, Peng Peng, is now 15 and this year, he'll be playing a Mozart piano duet with 13-year-old up and comer Conrad Tao. The orchestra will again be helmed by Carolyn......

-- Colors of Christmas: Oh yeah. You know you want to hear this KOIT-ish night of soulful holiday tunes live at Davies, right? Well, we sure do. Peabo Bryson, Oleta Adams, Ben Vereen, and Marilyn McCoo & Billy Davis Jr. croon R&B-tinged holiday classics and modern hits starting at 8 p.m. at Davies Symphony Hall; $20-$80. -- The SantaLand Diaries & Season's Greetings: David Sedaris' famous dysfunctional and wry Christmastime tales hit the stage.......

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......

San Francisco and the Bay Area are getting ready to throw a big (albeit somewhat belated) celebration for Philip Glass’ 70th birthday with concerts all over the place and, of course, the premier of Glass’ new opera Appomattox. And the kick-off is this Friday night with a very special and rare intimate recital courtesy of San Francisco Performances. Mr. Glass will be playing several of his pieces with cellist Wendy Sutter and percussionist Mick Rossi at Herbst Theater....

The SF Symphony returned from its trip to Europe and kicks off its 2007-08 season tonight, with a sold out opening night gala featuring MTT and Renée Fleming. We find it ironic that they will play Aaron Copland’s "Fanfare for the Common Man" -- a piece riddled with leftist political overtones -- to SF’s high society. Well then, it looks like the SF symphony is more subversive than we give them credit for this time.......

What does SF Opera music director Donald Runnicles do when he's not conducting Wagner at the War Memorial Opera House? He's conducting Wagner in London. What does SF Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas do when he's not conducting Mahler at Davies Symphony Hall? You guessed it: he's conducting Mahler in London. We knew that addicts to Mahler or Wagner existed. But to think that they live in our own backyard? Well, that's just spooky.......

-- hey willpower at Glitterbox: At this "funk punk thrash electro discotheque" (what, no show tunes? Bah), local pop/R&B/dance band performs. DJs Javier Natureboy and Junkyard spin funk, punk, and electro well into the morning hours. At least until 3 a.m., anyway. Starts at 9 p.m. at Cat Club, 1190 Folsom (at Eighth Street). -- Darrell Hammond: SNL comic comes to SF. He goes on at 8 p.m. and 10:15 p.m. at Cobb's Comedy......

-- Treat or Trick!: Ack, it's Halloween in July! SFShenanigans invite you to hand out candy at the Civic Center BART station tonight (at the platform closest to the Embarcadero.) Why? Just...because. So, dress up in your Halloween-ian finest! Bring fun-sized treats to pass out to weary BART riders! Spooktacular, drunk fun for all! 6 p.m.-8 p.m. at Civic Center BART, Market and Leavenworth; free. -- Your Mommy Kills Animals: Although we're voracious meat......

Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3 is a showpiece for a virtuoso of the keyboard, one with enough guts to tackle its challenges, and enough confidence to laugh at its difficult twists. Yefim Bronfman displayed more than guts and confidence, he showed some serious chutzpah. He impressed us last year in Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1, and renewed our awe Thursday night at Davies Symphony Hall with as solid a performance. He even got an extra brownie point for tongue-in-cheek creativity. ...

We're (sort of) proud to admit we used to play in a youth orchestra ourselves, in our misbegotten youth. Oh, the drama! The miserable attempts to rise in the ranks of the seating chart, the sinking realization that you're two pages behind the rest of the string section in the music, the haughty unfriendliness of the principal trumpet player and his bevy of giggling flautists..... oh, it takes us back. Well, we can't speak for......

The nicer the weather gets, the busier we get across the Ist-A-Verse. But we like being busy. Here's a peek at what we've been up to since last week! Chicagoist had an interview with Audrey Niffenegger, whose popular book, The Time Traveler's Wife, was based in their fine city. They also had a heated discussion about Rush Limbaugh's controversial Barack Obama parody, talked about whether Uncle Julio's Hacienda is a good place to get......

Droll NPR commentator (who was previously fired for cursing) Sandra Tsing Loh brings her one-woman show, "Mother On Fire," to the Women's Building tonight! For a 9 night run! The show's about her travails trying to find an appropriate school for her kindergarten age daughter in the California school system and ran for 7 months in LA. Here's the one-liner. "I looked at public schools, private schools, parochial schools -- even Baptist school. It turns......

It's almost the end of April and we didn't even realize it was National Poetry Month! We're going to make it up to everyone by passing along tonight's Poems Under The Dome event. Poems Under The Dome is an open-mic poetry event in the big reception area of the SF City Hall and sponsored by the city -- show up and read whatever poem you'd like! (One poem per reader, time limits will be......

Those of you who've been vociferously participating in our ongoing debates about Falun Gong, Mormonism, and Scientology will be pleased to hear that we spent tonight steeped in Mozart's Catholic Mass in C minor at Symphony Hall. Begin the transsubstantiation debates in the comments.... now! We had promised our companion a tour of the swanky digs in the press room at Symphony Hall before the concert, as well as some of their excellent cookies......

It doesn't feel right that we're subbing in for SFist Ced, who's on hiatus for a few months -- so we're doing a combination Gastronomique/Philistine review in his honor! Before heading out to the SF Youth Orchestra's Peter and the Wolf holiday concert this afternoon, we grabbed brunch at new trendy Mission bistro Weird Fish. Weird Fish is a combination seafood/vegan restaurant at 18th and Mission -- and the fish isn't really that weird. For......

The SF Bomb Squad's given the all-clear for a bomb scare outside Davies Symphony Hall this morning, on the Hayes Street side. Hey, we don't want to hear about a bomb scare at Symphony Hall -- we're supposed to be meeting the Philistine SFist Ced there later tonight! An alert gardener noticed a 3 foot by 1 foot yellow tub with a wire coming out of it, on top of a bottle and some liquid,......

Today's the opening day of the new SF Symphony season, with a Gala at Davies Symphony Hall and a performance of Stravinsky's violin concerto with Christian Tetzlaff soloing, and Dvorak's Symphony No. 8, with of course MTT at the helm. Then, the orchestra abandons us to woo the European crowds in the neutral countries of Luxembourg and Switzerland. They come back in time for a free noon-time concert in the Yerba Buena Gardens on Sept.......

Visiting conductor James Conlon twice asked for a perfect silence from the SF Symphony audience in Davies Symphony Hall, during Saturday's performance of Verdi's Requiem. The first time was to shush the house before opening the concert with the softest pianissimo from the cellos, a whisper of a murmur leading to the hushed prayer from the Chorus: Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and let everlasting light shine upon them. A shiny light was squarely......

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......

When going to the concert at Davies Symphony Hall last Thursday, we expected a feast for the ears. But visiting conductor Alan Gilbert made it quite a visual show as well: an unassuming man with the bulging pouch of a computer programmer, he looked a bit younger than his almost 40 years, and became quite possessed with the music, his hands fluttering like little birds in Dutilleux's Mystères de l'Instant. In Schumann's Manfred overture, his demeanor was by itself worth the admission price. Manfred, based on Byron's semi-autobiographical poem, is a tormented young man, and Gilbert was not only channeling that torment, he looked like he was rehearsing for the next sequel in the Karate Kid series. We are not here to solve chicken and egg problems: did Gilbert look this way because the orchestra sounded that way, or the other way around? In any case, the sound threads conductor and orchestra wove together were by all means appropriate. Dutilleux's 1989 opus, ten short pieces fused with no interruption as a single one, was played delicately by a small string orchestra plus percussions and cimbalom. The piece-shifting textures and tonal centers seemed to depict the difficulty of catching the instant, never settling long in the same mood: dramatic glissandos resolving in light pizzicatos, soloists passing the baton seamlessly to one another, here Alexander Barantschik at the violins, now Michael Grebanier at the cello. We thought of the sound of birds which Dutilleux claimed inspired him for the piece (they also inspired the other modern French composer Olivier Messiaen in a few works). We also thought of rain drops: ten short pieces, ten musical haikus, briefly evoking nature and going away. The cimbalom (we believe manned by Jay Stebley) stepped in and out, bringing a curious metallic, almost synthetic and oddly appealing sound to the piece. Picture from Alan Gilbert's press portfolio. He did not wear glasses Thursday though....

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. ...

Lang Lang opened a series of sold-out performances with the SF Symphony on Wednesday night. The pianist headlined a concert at Davies Symphony Hall, which also included the US premiere of The Flight of Icarus by John Pickard and a Haydn symphony. Lang Lang is pianist with a vast appeal crossing over to the general audience, not just the classical arena: his official web site biography mentions his playing on Jay Leno's show before......

Nobody puts Wednesday in a corner -- nobody! Today: Stumble on down 22nd Street and check out the Bay Guardian-awarded Best Comedian Paco Romane's Romane Event at the Make Out Room. Romane will duel it out with the SF Weekly's best comedian Will Franken, along with another comedic troupe, the Hurley Brothers (no doubt soon to become the EBX's best comedy troupe). They'll also be screening a movie by cartoonist Lev. $7, 8-10 p.m. Thursday: Lush romanticism and plush seats! Local classical cult leader Michael Tilson Thomas conducts the Brahms violin and cello concerto at 2 p.m. in Symphony Hall. Also, a flashy Liszt piece (is there any other kind?), nominally about Faust. Dedicated slackers, if you get there early, you can line up for the 40 tickets in the Center Terrace (behind second base, as it were), which go on sale 2 hours in advance for $15-20. After you get your ticket, go check out the free pre-show talk at 1 p.m. too. Friday: Support the developmentally disabled artists of Creativity Explored at their annual holiday art exhibition and sale. Opening reception goes from 6-9 at their store, on 16th Street right off Guerrero (right by Otsu). Picture of Paco Romane and Robin Williams from Free Dirt Media website...

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......

"Everyone who comes to a Margaret Cho show is either gay or Asian," one of our companions said as we fought our way into Symphony Hall on Friday night among the oceans of Banana Republic pants, leather jackets, and nicely-pressed colorful tops, for the first of Ms. Cho's SF shows on her new Assassin tour. "Or both!", responded our gay Asian-American companion. Margaret Cho is, of course, San Francisco's no-holds-barred Korean-American comedienne, and a proud dropout of Lowell High who then went on to star in the first-ever Asian-American TV comedy, All American Girl -- which then became the first-cancelled Asian-American TV comedy. And then the subject of Margaret's real breakout one-woman show and book, I'm the One That I Want. She brought her latest stand-up show back home, to an ecstatic, cat-calling crowd. Hit the expand-o-tron below for more Bush jokes than you can shake a stick at, and an update on Margaret's mom's health....

If you aren't checking out Frameline, seeing some music (Stern Grove on Sunday!) or peeing your pants at the Purple Onion, how about... Tonight, SF Homegirl Margaret Cho (who our sources say has been using some of the same material since high school) performs two shows tonight at Davies Symphony Hall as part of her Assasin tour. Tickets start at a whopping $25. But hey, support a blogger, will ya? Tomorrow at 11:30, revellers......

SFist admits to once having operatic aspirations, and can still be caught belting an aria out in the shower when we're sure no one else is home. But other than that, outlets for classical song expression are few and far between for those of us too lazy to many great chorales in the area. That's why every year we go to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music's Sing it Yourself Messiah. Yup, that's right. The......

While we've been known to swill Pabst like there’s no tomorrow, SFist does indeed have a cultured and classy side. That’s why tonight we’re rolling over to the Davies Symphony Hall to check out an exclusive joint performance between Phillip Glass and the Bang On a Can All-Stars. Philip Glass is the ensemble music crowd's bad a**, as he’s collaborated with popular artists such as David Byrne and adapted works by Brian Eno and......