Previews

Forty-nine minutes into our chat about the San Francisco Symphony Chorus’ Spring Concert, Music Director Ragnar Bohlin addresses what makes him tick.

Compared to Madama Butterfly and La Bohème, Puccini’s La rondine (The swallow), which premiered in 1917, is certainly a less-performed work, though it can hardly be called obscure.

If you enjoy being dazzled by virtuoso musical fireworks, then the upcoming program by the American Bach Soloists is surely designed with you in mind.

Decades after its ascension to the glittery throne of Glam Rock, the band Queen continues to resonate loudly in pop culture. You could hear Queen’s imperative Don’t Stop Me Now resonating from the loudspeakers at AT&T Park last week as hoi polloi sought their seats for a preseason skirmish between the San Francisco Giants and the visiting Oakland A’s.

There are a lot of reasons to attend the next performance of the Gold Coast Chamber Players. They’re playing in their new performance space, which violist Pamela Freund-Striplen calls “just wonderful.” They’re featuring a rising classical music star, soprano Leah Crocetto.

Musicians and dancers will come together in a new and engaging way in the spring season of the Alonzo King LINES Ballet, which runs April 16-25 at the Novellus Theater at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The season features the premiere of a work that partners the ballet ensemble with several San Francisco Opera Adler Fellows.

“The Tender Land resonates much more with us now than it did in the 50’s,” said Jonathan Khuner, Berkeley Opera’s musical director, of the company’s next production, April 10-18, in its new home at the El Cerrito Performing Arts Theater. “It’s intimate, not filled with the big themes, just about people deciding what to do with their lives.

There are a lot of brilliant ideas out there about involving children in classical music, but San Francisco Chamber Orchestra can stake a claim for one of the most original: conducting paired with circus clowns.