Michael Zwiebach

Pamela Z’s — whose Room Series continues this weekend with “Poetry and Motion” at the Royce Galler — is apparently an inexhaustible fount of great ideas, bringing together three musicians and three dancers in the Japanese Butoh tradition.

Casablanca may be the most popular movie ever made in old Hollywood. It has everything — a great story, stars, script — and one of the most memorable scores of the period. This Friday, the S.F. Symphony performs the magical score synched to the film itself.

The Bay Area has always been the home of musicians who are comfortable in more than one musical tradition. At Seventh Avenue Performances this weekend, you can find Escalay (Water Wheel), a group that combines classical Arabic repertoire with fusion jazz.

Lamplighters Musical Theatre has taken steps to connecting with larger audiences. The company has booked the revival of the delightful 2007 production of H.M.S. Pinafore, the natural choice to introduce audiences to the “canon.”

Some conductors have a special affinity with a particular piece of music and that’s the way it is when Jeffrey Thomas steps up to conduct J.S. Bach’s B-Minor Mass. You can miss it, but you’ll be kicking yourself in the morning.

If you haven’t had your Mozart fix in a few months, the Midsummer Mozart Festival is here to help you out. The impressive lineup of the first concert begins this weekend.

You might not think about attending the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, unless you’re a film buff. But all musicians know what makes silent film sound. If you’re intrigued by this merging of old and new, the Castro Theater is the place to be from July 14 to 17.

Experimental music in a wide variety of styles marks the Outsound Music Summit, now hitting its 10th year.

Most summer concerts are the equivalent of beach reading – the musical versions of vampire romances and spy thrillers. But for those who prefer to heft Gravity's Rainbow to the seaside, there is also a musical equivalent. Christopher Kula, the chief of Pacific Collegium is definitely one of the heavy lifting crowd and his programs never lack for ambition.

If you're wondering about the increasing coverage of jazz in the virtual pages of SFCV – more on this later – it's because jazz is classical music (not just America's classical music). Think about it: long-form instrumental pieces with lots of harmonic and rhythmic complexity (some of that derived from those European dead white males); small, niche market of enthusiasts; a repertoire of bedrock, classic pieces, which musicians reinterpret over and over again; casual listeners may find it “difficult”. What am I describing, traditional classical or traditional jazz?