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New music collective sfSound comes to Old First Concerts this week. For all you adventurers out there who like an intellectual challenge, this is the antidote to the easy listening summer pops season you’ve been waiting for.

Fremont Opera opens its La traviata next weekend. Local they may be, but they’ve scored with their Violetta: Danielle Talamantes, an up-and-comer slated to understudy at the Metropolitan Opera this season. 

For years now it’s been obvious that the classical orchestral concert is in need of some rethinking for modern audiences. And no one has been more out in front of this issue than the S.F. Chamber Orchestra, which began its popularizing mission by giving all its concerts away for free. Its current music director, Ben Simon, has gone the full monty, trying out a variety of new ideas. Simon’s new venture, “You Gotta Hear This” at the Rrazz Room in S.F. is an expansion on his original ideas.

Ancient and modern music techniques collide in Treasure State, a collaboration between So Percussion and Matmos. True collaborations can be tricky; new musical concepts can sometimes seem more like medicine than entertainment. But, these guys seem to be having fun entertaining each other, and the feeling is infectious.

Tickets for the performing arts can be expensive, though Cal Performances’ “Fall Free for All” is a day of gratis performances open to the public.

Ah! The Cabrillo Festival finale: “To hear infinity in the Mission San Juan Bautista and eternity in 97 minutes” — such was the hope implied by its “in aeternam” moniker.

Michael Kaiser, artistic head of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, is one of the most respected artistic administrators in America, as well as an inspiring speaker who is bullish on the arts. He will speak to SFCV on Aug. 24, and we want your questions for him.

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.

On Friday, Old First Concerts presented the premier concert by EUOUAE, a new chorus whose membership is drawn from many of the Bay Area’s professional and semiprofessional choirs. Formed and directed by Steven Sven Olbash, EUOUAE performed the rarely heard Messe de Tournai, a musical milestone in that the 14th-century Mass is the first-known complete polyphonic (multivoiced) Mass collected in a single manuscript.