New Music

Last month, a spirit of innovation and inclusion reigned as practioners and devotees of contemporary music performed and traded ideas.

Ingratiating, swinging, but also refined and transparent, So Percussion were at the top of their game in their Bay Area concerts.

The Empyrean Ensemble presented new works by Pulitzer Prize-winner Melinda Wagner and UC Davis composers at the 2015 Music and Words Festival.

With an emphasis on women creators, New York's Prototype Festival challenges stereotypes but also delivers powerful music theater.

The opening night of the 2014 Festival of New Music hits off with Loadbang, pianist Lara Downes, and percussion ensemble Rootstock Trio at Sacramento State campus.

The Cabrillo Festival opens with its usual bang, behind the powerhouse Christopher Rouse whose vibrant, propulsive (and loud) music is made for opening festivals.

Sometimes it’s good to venture out to the boundaries, find out what’s going on on the wild side of music. The annual Outsound Festival of experimental and improvisational music is as good a time as any to do this exploration. 

The latest concert of the young, well-received duo ZOFO features music from several space-age composers and, of course, excursions to Gustav Holst’s The Planets. 

Eos Ensemble, made up of members of the San Francisco Opera and Ballet Orchestras, celebrates their 10th anniversary with a Beethoven perennial, the Septet and Stravinsky’s laconic, darkly humorous Soldier’s Tale.

The Calder Quartet, which formed at the Thornton School at USC and then continued training at Colburn School in Los Angeles, has been seen frequently in the Bay Area over the past few years.