Michael Zwiebach

Over at the S.F. Conservatory, they’ve got the home-grown, student-run Hot Air Festival Marathon. 

Movie music — and movies about music — had a banner year in 2012. Here are the tracks from the actual nominated soundtracks plus a few extras, for fun.

Lara Downes plays with the Brooklyn-based band Build at the Mondavi Center March 23. Watch a brand new video for Tango of her new CD Exiles' Cafe.

The S.F. Symphony just won its 15th Grammy award since 1992, and fifth in the category of Best Orchestral Performance. Here’s a salute to this great ensemble, showcasing some of their award-winning recordings and favorites of the orchestral repertoire.

San Francisco Chamber Orchestra Artistic Director Ben Simon always concocts a hook that appeals to me and puts me in the mood to hear a concert.

The Assad Brothers are the preeminent classical guitar duo of the last 40 years, having set the standard for technical excellence, sensitive musicianship, and innovative repertoire choices and opportunities to see them together have been dwindling over the past few years.

The always-recommendable Ives Quartet is playing one of their recent commissions on this concert. 

The recent San Francisco Opera Adler Fellow with the bright tenor voice wowed Mozart lovers last summer with his performance of Tamino in The Magic Flute.

In a good production, Osvaldo Golijov and David Henry Hwang’s 80-minute opera Ainadamar packs one heck of a punch.

Pablo Heras-Casado’s mastery of contemporary-music idioms is perfect for the S.F. Symphony’s West Coast premiere of Magnus Lindberg's EXPO.