Michael Zwiebach

Young violinists, cellists, and even one violist from the United States' elite conservatories will once again be displaying their virtuosity at the Irving M. Klein String Competition finals at Knuth Hall on the SFSU campus this weekend.

Romance is on the minds of several Bay Area groups this weekend. Chanticleer's series of spring concerts kicks off this Friday, and love poetry forms the center of their program.

Elena Sharkova, who heads the 90-voice Symphony Silicon Valley Chorale, will use her intimate knowledge of works such as Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov's 1907 All-Night Vigil, in a concert that music lovers of all kinds should make an effort to see.

Concertmaster Laura Albers stakes out her space in the orchestra pit, then revs up to play Wagner’s long, intense operas.

The Rickshaw Stop is presenting Dustin O'Halloran this weekend with the Magik*Magik Orchestra's String Quartet and the Conspiracy of Venus women's vocal group. They'll be playing music off of O'Halloran's latest instrumental album, Lumiere.

It's a little off the beaten path, but if you think you'll be down on the boardwalk at Santa Cruz for part of the Memorial Day weekend, you might want to make time for a concert by the artists formerly known as the Santa Cruz Chamber Orchestra, now called Cadenza.

The little chorus with the highly unusual programming is back this weekend. If you're interested in great music that doesn't get performed that often, you should really be following Chora Nova.

The San Francisco Symphony was in Prague on the hundredth anniversary of Gustav Mahler's death. Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas shares his thoughts on the personal meaning of his musical idol's anniversary.

If love is in the air in spring, that must mean that it's tango season in music. At Mission San Jose in Fremont, Aileen Chanco's Music at the Mission series concludes with a cross-genre program centered on tango nuevo creator Astor Piazzolla.

Manuel de Falla's La vida breve is one of those operas you've heard (or heard about) but rarely seen. Enter West Bay Opera's Jose Luis Moscovich, who has ingeniously solved the problem of what to pair with the tale of a woman's abandonment by a fickle lover by presenting it alongside the iconic operatic tale of abandonment, Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas.