Arts & Entertainment Paul Simon Is Doing a Mini-Tour and Making SF Stop With Three July Shows Fresh off his appearance at the SNL:50 celebration on Sunday, Paul Simon is coming out of retirement to do a bit of a tour this spring and summer called "A Quiet Celebration." And he'll be in San Francisco for three nights in July.
Arts & Entertainment SF Symphony Chorus Goes on Strike, Canceling Thursday Night’s Season Opening Performance Ticket holders to Thursday night’s SF Symphony season opening performance of Verdi’s ‘Requiem’ were wrecked to find the performance canceled barely two hours before showtime, as the symphony’s chorus is on strike because their wages have been frozen.
Arts & Entertainment SF Symphony Moves Forward With Plans For Davies Expansion, Even Though They Have Budget Problems Despite a current budget shortfall, the San Francisco Symphony is nonetheless contemplating a major redesign and expansion of Davies Symphony Hall in the coming years.
Arts & Entertainment SF Symphony Audience Member Threatened With Ban From Concert Hall for Holding Up Vulgar Sign (in Finnish) This seems to be a first: The San Francisco Symphony is threatening to ban a regular attendee who held up a profane sign at a concert, written in Finnish, to protest the impending departure of musical director Esa-Pekka Salonen.
SF News Founder of Submersible Ocean Exploration Company Missing Near Titanic Wreckage Has SF Roots The captain of the submersible craft that is currently missing on the North Atlantic ocean floor near the wreckage of the Titanic, who is also the CEO and founder of the ocean exploration company that owns it, has some deep ties to San Francisco and maybe grew up here.
Arts & Entertainment Go Do This Thing: Ben Gibbard At Davies Symphony Hall Death Cab For Cutie / Postal Service frontman Ben Gibbard has not been touring a ton, but he'll be coming to San Francisco in June to do a special solo show at Davies Symphony
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: Gustavo Dudamel & the L.A. Philharmonic The Dude came to town. Not Jeff Bridges, but Gustavo Dudamel, who shares with him the disheveled long hair. The conductor and music director of the LA Phil, a.k.a. The Savior
Arts & Entertainment SFist Interviews Anne-Sophie Mutter Anne-Sophie Mutter is classical music's attempt to attract the 18-34 male demographic. She's the symphony hall's answer to Monday Night Football. She can play the violin like no one else, but she also
Arts & Entertainment SFist Tonight *MUSIC: You know that song at the end of , "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
misc The Philistine Has An SFist Polyphony 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
misc SFist Tonight -- 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,
Arts & Entertainment <i>The Wizard of Oz</i> + the San Francisco Symphony = All Kinds of Cheer 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,
Arts & Entertainment Philip Glass Is Coming, An Interview With Cellist Wendy Sutter By David Famiano Happy Belated Birthday, Mr. Glass! It’s an exciting time in San Francisco. All the burners are back from you know where feeling either pissed off or bummed out. All
Arts & Entertainment SF Symphony Season Preview 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
Arts & Entertainment MahTlerT In our haste on Tuesday, we forgot to mention that you could hear more MahTlerT (MTT and Mahler have become so imbricated that we had to create a shortcut) here (links to sound
Arts & Entertainment SFist Tonight -- 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,
Arts & Entertainment SFist Tonight -- 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.
Arts & Entertainment Hitting More than the Right Notes A finely modulated musicality pervaded his interpretation whenever Prokofiev gave him the opportunity, but the concerto is mostly a showpiece to display a dazzling technique, and Bronfman was up to the task, hands
SF News Bomb Scare 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, and called the authorities. The police
misc The Philistine's Fall Music Preview. You want to go below to see movie clips of Deborah Voigt and our running commentary on the SF Symphony's and SF Opera's season. Picture of MTT -Hi, Mike, good to see you
Arts & Entertainment Philistine: Verdi's Requiem A shiny light was squarely placed on Verdi's score: all the details came out brightly, all the nuances were expertly underlined. That delicate, masterfully controlled introduction only lead to more of the same
Arts & Entertainment Win Passes To <i>Frankenstein!!</i> 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
Arts & Entertainment SFist Goes to the Symphony: Mostly Schumann. 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
Arts & Entertainment SFist Goes to the Symphony: Lang Lang 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 his
Arts & Entertainment Fall Classical Music Preview 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
