Month: February 2017

Internationally acclaimed French cellist Gautier Capuçon returns to Davies Symphony Hall this week as the guest soloist with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony. He plays the Shostakovich Cello Concerto No 1 in a program which includes Tchaikovsky’s heart-melting Symphony No 6, Pathétique. Known for his profoundly expressive yet spirited artistry, Gautier Capuçon…

In the second concert devoted to the celebration of John Adams’ 70th birthday, Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony are joined by violinist Leila Josefowicz for a performance of Adams’ Scheherazade.2, followed by MTT and the Symphony’s Grammy-winning interpretation of a suite from Prokofiev’s gorgeous ballet music for Romeo and Juliet. Known as…

San Francisco Opera opens Season Two of its SF Opera Lab programs this week with a contemporary oratorio, The Source, by composer Ted Hearne – a work which has as its subject the dramatic 2010 release by US Army Private Manning of hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks. For the score of this…

Lovers of ballet in San Francisco are to be treated to a new full-length work this week – San Francisco Ballet’s production of Frankenstein, by British choreographer Liam Scarlett. A co-production with The Royal Ballet, Frankenstein was inspired by Mary Shelley’s 1813 Gothic novel, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, and the ballet received its world…

  John Adams, contemporary and ‘post-minimalist’ (his phrase) composer turns 70 this week. One of America’s best known and most frequently performed composers, Adams has enjoyed a long-term relationship with the San Francisco Symphony – the longest partnership he has had with a leading international orchestra during his career, and one which strengthened over the…