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Classical Revolution, the chamber group that fearlessly brings classics to unconventional venues, is not resting up after Sunday's gig at the Crowden School. On Oct. 19, it will play at Yoshi's S.F. with the Real Vocal String Quartet, a group that often plays American folk, and adds the musicians voices to the mix.

Community music schools in the Bay Area and across the nation are finding innovative ways to supply and fund music education for underserved children.

On Sunday, the Czech Nonet opened the Morrison Artists Series’ 55th season, curated by a new artistic director, composer Ronald Caltabiano. It was heartening to see a large audience (including many students) turn out for Sunday’s well-balanced, relevant, and brilliantly executed program.

Early music has considerable postmodern appeal for recorder virtuoso Piers Adams and his group, Red Priest. The group's long-awaited local stop is set as a Halloween-flavored concert on Oct. 28. Arrayed in colorful outfits that evoke olden days and issuing albums with tongue-in-cheek titles, like Red Priest, has effectively marketed itself as an unlikely team of English early-music all-stars.

It seemed an exciting if daunting prospect: hearing all of Beethoven’s cello sonatas at one sitting. Chamber music has a way of enlivening performers and audiences, and of inspiring them in ways that the solo and concerto literature, with its focus on the individual artist, often can’t. Cal Performances gave us the chance to witness Beethoven’s development from kid-wonder to the visionary master he was to become.

La Stupenda is no more. The brilliant coloratura soprano Joan Sutherland, who died a thousand deaths onstage after emitting flawless high E-flats, died on Oct. 10 at her Swiss home near Montreux.

Who was Emily Dickinson? Popular portrayals cast the famed 19th-century poet as an eccentric recluse, a shadowy Woman in White. But “that image seems to be a fabrication, and when you go further into the story or into her work, an entirely different character emerges,” says Kathryn Roszak of Danse Lumière, which stages “Pensive Spring: A Portrait of Emily Dickinson” Oct. 10 and 19 as part of Berkeley Chamber Performances.

As one of the world’s best-known classical guitarists, John Williams has been responsible for both raising the instrument’s profile and expanding its repertoire. Today Williams, 69, has performed and recorded virtually every piece for the standard classical guitar repertoire; he has also championed African, Cuban, and Latin American composers, and collaborated widely. In a recent call from his home in London, he talked about his work and this week’s concert, which marks his 10th appearance for San Francisco Performances.

“Recorded Music of the African Diaspora” is the first release of what promises to be a series in a partnership between Albany Records and the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College Chicago. This series starter can be strongly recommended for the Wilson song cycle.

Never have I understood the term “Papa Haydn” more clearly than I did at the Takács Quartet concert Saturday at Herbst Theatre, presented by San Francisco Performances. To open a string quartet concert with Haydn is standard procedure, but the Takács brought a distinct connection to Haydn.