Every week, there seems to be at least one concert that asks us to hear something familiar in a new way. Sometimes that’s a centuries-old masterpiece that reveals unexpected layers. Sometimes it’s a brand-new piece that reminds us contemporary music isn’t some alien language — it just happens to have been written by someone who’s still alive.

This week, my picks range from ghost stories to family concerts, from chamber music to experimental performance.

1. Cabrillo Festival: On Freedom

For many people, “contemporary classical music” sounds like homework. Cabrillo Festival has spent more than 60 years making the case that it can instead be one of the most exciting nights you’ll spend in a concert hall.

The opening program, On Freedom, is a fitting introduction. Two world premieres sit alongside the West Coast premiere of Philip Glass’s Symphony No. 15, Lincoln, a meditation on Abraham Lincoln’s words that feels especially timely. Rather than presenting new music as an academic exercise, Cabrillo treats it as a living conversation — one where composers are responding to the same questions and uncertainties the rest of us are.

One of the pleasures of the festival is that nobody expects you to arrive knowing what you’ll hear. Discovery is part of the ticket.

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Do you remember when summer sizzled with blockbuster movies that captured the imagination? The Odyssey is currently capturing mine, though I have yet to secure tickets.

Join me in making a plan this weekend to soak up music at a festival, relish being outdoors, or experience a favorite film in a new way. After all, we are in peak summer music festival season!

1. This year’s Midsummer Mozart Festival explores the question through its programming for the 2026 Festival: “Could there be parallels and common themes between our nation’s development and Mozart’s life / musical journey?” The Midsummer Mozart Festival begins in Berkeley this Friday before heading to Sonoma on Saturday, then turning toward the South Bay on Sunday.

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Festival season is the perfect time to discover a love for chamber music. Neither stuffy nor sedate, this is music where players relate to each other on a close level. You can observe as well as hear their interactions and pick out the sound of individual instruments. Not to mention there’s a lot of wonderful music out there created by and for small groups. Throw in a festival setting, and a chamber music concert is the perfect topper for a summer day.

These are my top picks this week:

1. “Being Mendelssohn,” Music@Menlo, July 19, 4 p.m. The Music@Menlo festival is recapping some of its greatest hits this year, and this concert is one that should be on your must-do list. Mendelssohn was never at a loss for melodic inspiration. Some of the music on this concert from early on in the composer’s career is largely underplayed, as opposed to that of his later works. And of course, the musicians are exceptional. Arrive early to hear the Prelude Performance from the young musicians in Menlo’s training programs.

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There’s nothing quite like experiencing classical music in the great outdoors. Feeling a breeze off the shimmering Bay during a grand overture, hearing the rustling of trees during an introspective interlude, and seeing a sunset during a climactic finale are unforgettable.

This week in the Bay Area, you have multiple opportunities to take a day trip, step into nature, and enjoy a multisensory musical experience outside. If you were looking forward to San Francisco’s fogged-out Fourth of July fireworks show on the Golden Gate Bridge, perhaps some of these performances can, in their own way, fill the gap:

1. SF Symphony at Stern Grove Festival — July 12

Stern Grove Festival is the longest-running nonprofit music festival in the country, having brought free live music to San Francisco for 89 years. Among a multi-genre lineup — including performances by Japanese Breakfast, Suki Waterhouse, and Public Enemy — SF Symphony will take the stage in the festival’s outdoor amphitheater on July 12 with Béla Fleck. It is sure to be a rousing concert, with a program featuring the Overture to Leonard Bernstein’s Candide and George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

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1. Jazz at LACMA: Ray Charles Alumni Band — Friday, July 3, 6 p.m., Smidt Plaza at LACMA, free.

   Ray Charles spent the latter half of his career working out of RPM International, the studio and label he built on Washington Boulevard, a few miles east of LACMA’s plaza. The musicians in the Alumni Band carry that legacy: tight horn charts, a backbeat that hits hard, and Ray’s special blend of soul and jazz. It’s free and outdoors. Bring a picnic and a folding chair!

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When I look at what’s on offer this weekend, a thread emerges: the human voice, in all its forms. Three of these five performances are built around choral singing — voices gathering to affirm something together. A fourth features the pipe organ, which composers have always treated less like an instrument and more like a breathing, speaking presence. And the fifth closes with a work written specifically to lift a soprano voice out of a string quartet. It’s not a coincidence. We reach for singing — communal, embodied, impractical singing — when we most need to say something that prose won’t hold. This weekend, that something feels a lot like hope.

1. At Davies Symphony Hall this Thursday through Saturday, conductor Stéphane Denève leads the San Francisco Symphony in an all-French organ extravaganza with organist Olivier Latry. The program opens with Guillaume Connesson’s Flammenschrift — its San Francisco Symphony premiere — before moving into Francis Poulenc’s brooding, medievally inflected Organ Concerto, a work shaped by the renewed spiritual sensibility that informed much of his later music. The evening culminates with Saint-Saëns’ beloved Symphony No. 3, whose writing is the perfect showcase for Davies Symphony Hall’s magnificent instrument. If you’ve never heard that organ shake the hall, this is your moment.

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Tomorrow is Juneteenth and for most, a national holiday that dovetails into the longest day of the year on Saturday before Father’s Day arrives. Even with that extra time, there’s not enough time to engage with everything on offer, including Juneteenth concert programming that highlights Black American composers, heady classical concerts by German composers, and a chance to hear Baroque instruments live. I’m sharing my five picks for a long weekend of performances… and maybe one more (KITKA at Old First Concerts performing a solstice-oriented program).

1. Gaffigan conducts Beethoven’s Ninth, SF Symphony: If you find yourself free today, you can sit in on an open rehearsal of this beloved work, in a program dedicated to Michael Tilson Thomas. It’s been years since I sang the Ninth’s chorus in my college’s choral union, but I still thrill at silently singing along with the crowning moment of jubilation. Don’t miss the MTT tribute exhibit in the lobby. June 18, 20, 21

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Though the SF Symphony still has a couple of weeks left in its season, this weekend marks the beginning of summer festivals in the Bay Area! As the Healdsburg Jazz Festival and Stern Grove Festival get under way, The Berkeley Festival and Exhibition continues to expand early music in fascinating ways through June 14.

These five shows are sure to set the stage for an excellent summer:

1. Music of the Regiment: Francis Johnson’s New Cotillions, Berkeley Festival and Exhibition: I can’t wait to see the New York Baroque Dance Company present social dances of the early 19th century to music by Francis Johnson, who was, among many firsts, the first Black American composer to have his music published under his own name. It’s set to be one of the most entertaining shows on the BFX calendar this year. June 12, 5 p.m. at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church.

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The first weekend of June is crowded with cool music in the Bay Area, even as the spring season is supposed to be cooling off. There will be a motherlode of chorus concerts: among professional groups, SF Choral Artists, Voices of Silicon Valley, Chanticleer, Kaleidoscope, Cantata Collective, and Tactus SF will all be in action. But there are plenty of other performances vying for your attention, as well. Here are my top choices.

1. SF Symphony with Elim Chan: The orchestra’s music director-designate leads a concert of showpieces, beginning with Wagner’s “Prelude and Liebestod” from Tristan und Isolde and closing with Claude Debussy’s opulent La Mer. Also, mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke joins the orchestra for Hector Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été. June 5-6, Davies Symphony Hall, S.F.

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By Chloe Wintersteen, managing editor

With summer on the horizon, this week in the classical arts is defined by new beginnings. I’m thrilled to recommend five performances that refresh established masterpieces, and reinvigorate the Bay Area’s classical performance scene.

1) The Phantom of the Opera holds a special place in San Francisco’s history. Its five-year run at the Curran Theater in the 90’s attracted over 3 million audience members and grossed over $150 million. Aside from revues like Beach Blanket Babylon, Phantom holds the record for San Francisco’s longest running musical at 2,126 performances. It also consistently employed local talent.

Beginning this weekend, you have an opportunity to relive this cornerstone of the Bay Area’s musical history. The current Phantom tour opens May 28 at the Orpheum and is set to run through June 21. Since a traditional production of Phantom is no longer running on Broadway (it closed in 2023 after a 35 year run), this is a unique opportunity to experience a trailblazing classic.

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By Claudia Campazzo, executive director

The best musical experiences I’ve had have come from curiosity. Whether the music is new to me or deeply familiar, I like to approach a concert with a spirit of adventure — wondering what it will sound like, and what I’ll carry with me when it’s over. I invite you to bring that same curiosity to any of these five concerts happening this weekend.

1. In San Francisco this Thursday through Sunday, drummer, composer, and producer Makaya McCraven brings his In These Times ensemble to SFJAZZ for four nights as part of his residency as a 2025–26 Resident Artistic Director. The ensemble features his core group plus strings and special guests, with each performance varying in approach and repertoire, recorded live and later creatively reworked for a future album release. The concerts are themselves a work in progress — documents of music being made in real time.
   
   

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By Annelies Zijderveld, Social Media Manager

We are in that part of spring that signals season finales for some arts organizations and the beginning of summer music festivals kicking off later this month. My picks for the weekend take you all over the Bay Area.

• In Oakland on Friday, the Oakland Symphony will stage Beethoven’s “Eroica” for their season finale.

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