Michael Zwiebach

What you really want on July 4, if this is a major holiday for you, is a big, traditional band concert.

If you want a fair that features great music, look no further than Festival Opera's Opera in the Park.

By now, if you haven’t heard of Classical Revolution, the chamber music collective that specializes in bringing classical music to local neighborhood venues, you’re behind the times.

Every year, Sarah Cahill and New Music Bay Area’s Garden of Memory concert offers a special way to celebrate summer.

The Bay Area harbors a number of excellent composers who regularly fly under the radar. One of these is Kurt Rohde, a Rome-prize winner of a few years back. The Left Coast Ensemble regularly premieres his work and this week they’re taking on another of his pieces,...maestoso ...misterioso on a concert titled Delicacies for Diverse Ensembles.

Improbable as the revival of Handel operas might have seemed 30 years ago, many of them are now regularly programmed internationally. From being the province of early-music specialists, the fortunate Handelian few have escaped shelf-confinement into the broader repertory.

This piano competition, though it is not extremely well-known, has a first-class international jury headed by Antonio Pompa-Baldi. Instead of a final round with full orchestra and contestants playing concertos, this competition features a final round of piano trios (quite an assignment for the two string players hired).

The divine Dominique  Labelle, Nic McGegan, and a few pals from Philharmonia Baroque lead off the Berkeley Festival and Exhibition with the kind of concert that you only wish came around more often.

As an introduction to the riches of the Spanish classical tradition, you could not do any better than this concert.

Take one day for choral music and look in on this appropriately ambitious concert.