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Before departing for their big European tour, Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony offered their own bon-voyage sendoff Thursday night in Davis Symphony Hall. This was a sampler that will not be offered again anywhere.

Swarms of new and returning students clogged the streets around UC Berkeley Thursday evening. What to do: Attend a free opera or check out frat-house receptions? Considering the state of art music in the U.S. today, you can guess where they went. Nevertheless, about a hundred or so did show up for Our American Cousin in Hertz Hall.

Newcomers to the job market often quickly become aware of the Catch-22 phenomenon: You can't embark upon your dream career unless you're experienced, and you can't become experienced unless you can get experience. Nowhere is this truer or more impossible than among aspiring conductors. You not only have to have the chops to conduct the orchestra, you have to have the orchestra.

You have to be a bit of a high-stakes gambler to be an opera composer. You spend a long time, probably several years at least, carefully putting together a project, writing and revising it, and seeing it through to performance (assuming it's been accepted for production).

The 50th year of the highly merited Merola Opera training program ended with a flourish of young hopefuls at the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House on Saturday evening with a Grand Finale concert, assisted by members of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra.

Napa Valley's "Music in the Vineyards," now in its 13th season, produced an exciting and eclectic concert on Saturday afternoon in the small hall at the posh Silverado Cellars.

If every piece of architecture had its own inherent sound, the church of Mission San Juan Bautista would be heard for miles. The relatively high-ceilinged structure (long and narrow, made of wood and plaster, and primitively painted), whose interior was completed in 1817, creates a resounding acoustic like none other I've experienced.

Great performances are nearly a given at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, whether or not you find yourself loving the work being played, thanks to Music Director Marin Alsop and her fabulous orchestra.

You have to be a bit of a high-stakes gambler to be an opera composer. You spend a long time, probably several years at least, carefully putting together a project, writing and revising it, and seeing it through to performance (assuming it's been accepted for production).

In 1781, Joseph Haydn wrote to his publisher Artaria about recent performances of his Stabat Mater in Paris: "They were amazed to find me so exceptionally pleasing in vocal composition, but I am not amazed, and they have heard nothing yet; if only they could hear my short opera L'isola disabitata ...