Jason Victor Serinus

It’s not just about the big names. When the 53rd Monterey Jazz Festival swings into action on Friday, Sept. 17, ten gifted high school–age ensembles will feature prominently on the grounds and main arena stages. Their appearances constitute but one aspect of a comprehensive jazz education program.

Soprano Danielle de Niese — eye-buggingly beautiful, extremely intelligent, and madly in love with everything she does — is a joy to interview. Here she talks about her steamy iPod encounters, S.F. Opera debut in Figaro, work with Nicola Luisotti, and recent vocal developments. 

As one of the grandest of grand operas, it’s only fitting that Verdi’s Aida would open San Francisco Opera’s fall season. The 140 people assembled on the War Memorial Opera House stage for the Triumphal Scene may not have held a candle to the 2,000 supernumeraries enlisted by Col. Mapleson in Chicago in 1885, but when you add in all the women in the audience who used the opening as an excuse to wear huge pieces of Egyptian-styled jewelry, it was quite the show.

Judging from their playing, which pours forth freely in one melodic stream after another, Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields must have relished their assignment. Their recent multichannel SACD sampler of orchestral music by Gordon Getty (b. 1933), released by Pentatone, is a joyful experience, overflowing with lovely, richly scored pieces.

As San Francisco Opera prepares to open its star-studded fall season on Sept. 10, several smaller companies are trumpeting that this is far from a one-house region. Indeed, the risks that regional companies are taking at a time of economic contraction — I’m being euphemistic here — are cause for rejoicing.

Imani Winds has me confused. Its latest CD, Terra Incognita, reflects its preference for new music that pushes boundaries. But while the jazz composers it has commissioned — Jason Moran, Wayne Shorter, and one of its favorites, Paquito D’Rivera — most definitely write new music that crosses the line between jazz and classical, the Imanis for the most part play it straight.

Soprano Sondra Radvanovsky’s first solo recital helps clarify her position in the pantheon of great Verdi sopranos. In this recording by Delos in a Moscow studio, backed by San Francisco–born Constantine Orbelian and his Philharmonia of Russia, Radvanovsky holds forth in 10 drama-filled arias that showcase her innately dramatic voice that seems tailor-made for Verdi.

Want to know what can makes a bel canto opera performance great and what can neutralize it? Head to Cowell Theater, where select participants in this summer’s installment of San Francisco Opera’s famed Merola Opera Program hold forth in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore.

Mi Alma Mexicana abounds in revelations. That its all-Mexican classic repertoire, which ranges from sedate, 120-year-old, European-influenced salon music to uncommonly savage modern fare, arrives with such wide-eyed freshness and power owes as much to the abundant gifts of 29-year-old conductor Alondra de la Parra as to the artistry of the young members of her 6-year-old Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas (POA).

Franz Schubert’s song cycle Die Winterreise (The Winter journey) exercises a remarkable pull on singers. The great baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau recorded the 24-song cycle seven times while his equally iconic predecessor and contemporary, bass-baritone Hans Hotter, left us with three. On July 25, at Music@Menlo, baritone Randall Scarlata and pianist Gilbert Kalish will join the long list of artists who have attempted to enthrall listeners with this chilling masterpiece about lost love.