Michael Zwiebach

Philip Glass has got a pick-up band of all stars ready for his inaugural Days and Nights Festival in Carmel Valley. The first weekend features Glass' compositions paired with works by Franz Schubert and Dmitri Shostakovich. Personally, if forced to pick one, I'd opt for Saturday night at Hidden Valley, with Glass' String Quartet No. 5 paired with Schubert's evergreen Piano Trio in B-Flat, D. 898.

At Clos Pegase Winery in Calistoga, the Music in the Vineyards husband-and-wife team of Michael and Daria Adams have put together quite a program.

The Music@Menlo festival brings its survey of Brahms to a brilliant close with clarinetist David Shifrin, Paul Neubauer, Gilbert Kalish, and cellist Paul Watkins.

Turtle Island Quartet has been touring the U.S. for the past several months playing selections from their Jimi Hendrix album Have You Ever Been...? This weekend they return to California with a set at Yoshi's S.F.

The Merola Opera Program steps out with Rossini's oft-played masterpiece The Barber of Seville, an easy recommendation, and an all-star cast: The Merolini are singers you will soon be seeing in major opera houses around the globe.

Here's a summer concert that's easy and cheap: for just $15 you can get in to the Piedmont Piano Company to hear excellent pianist Eliane Lust play Joplin, Gershwin, and a variety of tangos.

Music in the Vineyards' first weekend brings a delightful trio of twilight concerts, one at Robert Mondavi the other at Regusci Winery and one at Rubicon Estate.

From the 1690s all the way to the 2000s, composers have mined Shakespeare for operatic gold. Here's a list of 10 of the best operas based on Shakespeare, so far.

Emmanuel Chabrier’s L’etoile, his first opera, was written for Jacques Offenbach’s Bouffes Parisiennes and premiered there in late 1877. If you’ve never seen or heard the piece, it’s worth the trouble to seek it out.

Although not everybody is happy to acknowledge it, John Williams is likely the most popular American composer of classical music alive today. The San Francisco Symphony winds up its Summer and the Symphony series with a jaunt through the Williams canon, with a few nods to his compatriots in what is some of the most sophisticated and brilliantly orchestrated movie music ever.