Michael Zwiebach

6 days ago | sfcv.org | Michael Zwiebach

Like a baseball game rescheduled after a rainout, there was one more concert on the San Francisco Symphony’s season calendar after last week’s grand finale with outgoing Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen. The orchestra staged its makeup performance of Verdi’s Requiem on Friday, June 20, a concert that was canceled during the Symphony Chorus’s strike in September last year. James Gaffigan generously stepped in to conduct the work, which Salonen would have led in the fall.

1 week ago | sfcv.org | Michael Zwiebach

Mozart’s Idomeneo will never be the composer’s most popular work, but it is a great opera, full of fire and vivid characterizations. Merely 24 years old when he wrote the score, Mozart poured everything he had into Idomeneo and San Francisco Opera’s excellent new production, which opened on Saturday, June 14, at the War Memorial Opera House and runs through June 25, showed the work’s dramatic power and musical beauty thanks to a fully committed cast.

1 month ago | sfcv.org | Michael Zwiebach

Esa-Pekka Salonen and the musicians of the San Francisco Symphony are making the most of their remaining concerts together. That much was clear on Friday, May 23, at Davies Symphony Hall, as the outgoing music director led the first in a monthlong series of performances marking the end of his tenure with the orchestra.

1 month ago | sfcv.org | Janos Gereben |Michael Zwiebach |Peter Feher |Simon Cohen

Yerba Buena Gardens Festival | May 10 – Oct. 4San Francisco Opera Summer Season | June 3–27Ojai Music Festival | June 5–8Britt Music & Arts Festival | June 6 – Sept. 18Hollywood Bowl | June 7 – Sept. 28San Francisco Jazz Festival | June 13–15Healdsburg Jazz Festival | June 13–22Music Academy of the West | June 15 – Aug. 9Stern Grove Festival | June 15 – Aug. 17Mainly Mozart | June 18–28San Francisco Symphony Summer Season | June 26 – Aug. 3Merola Opera Program | June 26 – Aug.

2 months ago | sfcv.org | Michael Zwiebach

Conductor Marin Alsop has finally brought her love of big-boned, emotionally demonstrative music to the San Francisco Symphony. Making her subscription series debut at Davies Symphony Hall on Thursday, April 10, the renowned 68-year-old music director led a pulse-quickening program that matched her highly physical conducting style with two Latin American works, two fanfares, and Samuel Barber’s Symphony No. 1.