San Francisco Performances favorite Jonathan Biss returns with an ambitious and intriguing series of recitals that ask contemporary American composers of three generations to consider and musically respond to the legacy of Franz Schubert. Alvin Singleton (b. 1940) draws inspiration from a wide stream including folk and spiritual, classical and pop, with often surprising and theatrical nuance. At just 23, Tyson Gholston Davis has been commissioned by an astonishing array of artists and ensembles, including the Juilliard String Quartet and Eighth Blackbird.

Jonathan Biss’s boundless curiosity about humanity and art make him a thoughtful and compelling performer. He is known for assembling programs that plumb the depths of history, explore sparks of creativity and affirm the unity of shared experience. San Francisco Classical Voice called him, “a pianist whose probing, incisive, and deeply considered performances are consistently challenging and rewarding.”

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Jonathan Biss | Piano

War Memorial and Performing Arts Center

With an ”electrifying sense of fearlessness” (San Francisco Chronicle), Raehann Bryce-Davis has made the opera and concert world sit up and take notice of her abundant energy and magnetic style. A gifted singing actress, she has a distinctive point of view in recital programs that bring together voices and stories old and new that resonate with love and courage, resilience and humanity.

Raehann Bryce-Davis | Mezzo-Soprano

Two portraits of triumph: one sturdy and unapologetic, the other with unerring dramatic instincts but an ambivalent heart.


Van Zweden Conducts Beethoven

Davies Symphony Hall

Making his San Francisco Symphony debut, the 29-year-old South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho applies his powerhouse technique and interpretive finesse to Beethoven’s tender, tempestuous Third Concerto. Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony ups the emotional ante with a profoundly personal testimony. As the composer confessed, “there is not a single line in my symphony which I have not felt deeply, and which does not echo true and sincere emotions.”

MTT & Seong-Jin Cho

Podcast link: https://youtu.be/4hagYvrYbuM

The Artelize Podcast and Kasper Holten - Pedefining Opera for the modern world

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d36M5Hi6O80

The Artelize Podcast - A legacy of innovation in Opera: Celebrating Marc A. Scorca

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59E40S_EQSY

The Artelize Podcast: A love letter that was never sent

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THv6htilWtI

The Artelize Podcast and Adolfo Corrado: Mediterranean flavors, opera and social media

Itzhak Perlman’s PBS television special Great Performances: In the Fiddler’s House won an Emmy Award in 1995. A recording of the same name was simultaneously released by EMI Classics/Angel, featuring The Klezmatics accompanying Perlman on his first foray into klezmer. This presentation brings the foot-stopping, heartbeat-raising music to audiences around the country, exposing them to a unique and unforgettable cultural music experience that will leave them dancing in the aisles.

Itzhak Perlman: In The Fiddler’s House

Featuring many of his most rapturous melodies—the “Adagietto” is a love poem for his young bride Alma—the Fifth Symphony finds Mahler at his most joyous and life-affirming. It’s the ideal vehicle for Music Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas, whose decades-long devotion to the Austrian visionary yielded the acclaimed Mahler recording project on SFS Media. In Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra, offbeat instrumental combinations and collisions create new harmonic pathways, new expressive possibilities.

MTT Conducts Mahler 5

Join Concertmaster Alexander Barantschik, Associate Principal Cello Peter Wyrick, and pianist Anton Nel in concerts at the Legion of Honor’s beautiful Gunn Theater. This series features the gorgeous 1742 Guarnerius del Gesù violin, once owned by Jascha Heifetz, now generously on loan from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Chamber Music at Legion of Honor

Legion of Honor

Today’s Stars, Tomorrow’s Legends: Catch ascendant soloists in their Davies Symphony Hall recital debuts.

Eric Lu

“Hers is a voice so big and so spine-tinglingly beautiful that on a nightly basis it does the near impossible” (The Guardian). Two-time GRAMMY winner Lisa Fischer joins Gullah groovemasters Ranky Tanky for an incendiary reprise of their sold out 2022 residency.

Known far and wide for her powerhouse vocals and prominent role in director Morgan Neville’s Oscar-winning 2013 music documentary 20 Feet From Stardom, Fischer won a GRAMMY for her #1 charting R&B single “How Can I Ease the Pain” and has toured for over two decades with the Rolling Stones, belting out “Gimme Shelter” to astonished audiences around the world. She’s contributed her soaring instrument to innumerable film soundtracks and performances alongside Luther Vandross, Tina Turner, Gregory Porter, Chris Botti, Sting, and industrial rock juggernaut Nine Inch Nails.

Ms. Lisa Fischer w/ Ranky Tanky

SFJAZZ Center

“With his finely etched features and piercing green eyes, trumpeter Chris Botti combines matinee idol looks with the simmering lyricism of an expert balladeer” (The Mercury News).  Botti, the world’s biggest-selling jazz instrumentalist, was never the same after hearing Miles Davis’ version of “My Funny Valentine” when he was 12. A trumpeter with a sumptuous, enveloping tone, fluent phrasing and sense of space, Botti became a masterly musician equally at home in the realms of jazz and pop.

Chris Botti

The Austrian-born vocalist, songwriter, and percussionist brings a new dimension to the late singer and songwriter Amy Winehouse’s modern classic, Back to Black.

The first woman to graduate as part of the inaugural class of the RJAM (Roots, Jazz, and American Music) program at San Francisco Conservatory co-created with SFJAZZ, Anna studied with conservatory faculty, members of the SFJAZZ Collective including David Sánchez and Edward Simon, and jazz greats Julian Lage and Randy Weston. Her time with the program made so much of an impact on Anna that she returned to the Conservatory as Assistant Director of the RJAM program and has established a career as a performer whose omnivorous tastes have informed her singular aesthetic, blending influences and genres freely and with an enthusiastic passion.

Amelie Anna

Resident Artistic Director Julian Lage begins his week with a solo recital, showcasing the breadth of his guitar mastery in the most revealing setting — one in which his peerless musicianship is presented without restrictions, undiluted and unadorned.


The evening harkens back to Lage’s landmark 2015 Modern Lore release World’s Fair, a solo guitar session of original compositions focused on the exploration of the song styles that shaped his own aesthetic, inspired by the work of a formative influence, classical guitar genius Andrés Segovia.

Julian Lage, Solo Guitar

With “a rare mix of delicacy and boldness” (The Guardian), the lauded British vocalist makes her San Francisco debut with this performance as part of her Hampstead Jazz Club Presents American tour, performing material from her latest Lateralize Records release, The Heart Wants.

Born in Durham in Northeast England, Harrop was raised on a steady diet of Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, and credits a Newcastle performance by Tony Bennett she attended as a teen for planting the seed to be a performer. “I was so moved and so inspired, I realized that I needed to sing. I wanted to be able to touch people with my music in the same way.”

Jo Harrop

Night two brings a special night with Lage’s working trio featuring bassist Jorge Roeder and Dave King on drums, joined by the acclaimed singer and songwriter Margaret Glaspy for her collaborative project with Lage, Rude Ruth. Formed a decade ago by the now husband-and-wife team of Lage and Glaspy and originally performing as a duo, Rude Ruth re-imagines Glaspy’s folk-rock compositions concerning romantic conflict with the improvisational depth of Lage’s band, adding unexpected new dimensions to the singer’s work with an unusually empathetic backing.

Julian Lage: Rude Ruth

“A richly impressive amalgam of Bill Withers and Billy Eckstine" (JazzTimes), vocalist Bearde brings his romantic interpretations of the beloved songbook of the late Burt Bacharach, whose seven decades of unforgettable music, from “The Look of Love” to “That’s What Friends are For,” has become part of the American cultural fabric.

A native of Nashville, Bearde began singing in earnest while living in Japan during his military service. After a stint in the L.A. music scene, he made his home in the Bay Area, and began focusing on jazz. For more than a decade he toured and recorded with Bobby McFerrin’s innovative vocal ensemble Voicestra and later its off-shoot, SoVoSó.

Nicolas Bearde

Lage honors the legacy and enduring influence of piano icon Keith Jarrett with his current trio, plus a special guest pianist to-be-named soon. Lage acknowledged Jarrett’s fertile 1970s compositional period with a pair of tracks on his 2019 Mack Avenue trio date Love Hurts with Roeder and King, tackling Jarrett’s serpentine and ebullient “The Windup” from his 1974 ECM masterpiece Belonging and “Encore (A)” from the 1979 session Eyes of the Heart featuring the pianist’s vaunted American quartet. Lage keeps the flame burning for the sidelined Jarrett, whose performing career has now tragically come to an end.

Julian Lage Quartet: Music of Keith Jarrett

Lage’s final night of residency is a celebration of the late guitar legend Jim Hall, a lasting influence on and mentor to Lage, featuring an all-star quartet with deep ties to the 2004 NEA Jazz Master who passed away in 2013.

The masterful rhythm section of veterans Scott Colley and Joey Baron performed widely in Hall’s trio during his last years, with Lage joining during a memorable week at New York’s Blue Note in 2012. Of Lage, Hall said, “Incredible player. Julian Lage is the new jazz guard.”

Julian Lage Quartet: Jim Hall Tribute

Albanian-born cellist Rubin Kodheli has made a career as a restless creator, working alternately in rock, modern classical, and jazz settings with artists including Dave Douglas, Henry Threadgill, Meredith Monk, and Tom Harrell. He brings his trio based in improvisation featuring bassist Trevor Dunn and drummer Brian Chase, performing the freewheeling, ecstatic music from their new self-released album Departure.

Rubin Kodheli

Guitarist Paulo Angeli is a musical conjurer, an artist whose imaginative leaps defy gravity. A composer, ethnomusicologist and instrument builder who draws on his deep knowledge of traditional Sardinian music, he inhabits a timeless zone as a soil-rooted master and brash experimentalist. While suffused with Mediterranean cadences, Angeli’s original pieces encompass flamenco, jazz, Baroque, post-rock and new music. He plays a prepared Sardinian guitar of his own invention, a fantastical 18-string hybrid combining elements of guitar, cello and drums.

Paolo Angeli

Mad Scenes are among the most exciting moments in opera! Characters express their mental distractions with high notes, low notes, fast notes, and passionate conviction. In the hands of Baroque masters like Handel and Vivaldi, those moments create pinnacles of drama that tear at your heartstrings as if the characters are people that we know. Sarah Coit and Hadleigh Adams will bring you unforgettable experiences as they move throughout the room and among the audience, delivering gripping theatrics from only an arm's distance away. Of course, specialty cocktails will be designed for the night's theme, and casual cafe-style seating offers easy mingling with the performers.

Events in San Francisco, CA

Jonathan Biss | Piano

San Francisco Performances

Raehann Bryce-Davis | Mez...

San Francisco Performances

Van Zweden Conducts Beeth...

San Francisco Symphony

MTT & Seong-Jin Cho

San Francisco Symphony

The Artelize Podcast and ...

Artelize

The Artelize Podcast - A ...

Artelize

The Artelize Podcast: A l...

Artelize

The Artelize Podcast and ...

Artelize

Itzhak Perlman: In The Fi...

San Francisco Symphony

MTT Conducts Mahler 5

San Francisco Symphony

Chamber Music at Legion o...

San Francisco Symphony

Eric Lu

San Francisco Symphony

Ms. Lisa Fischer w/ Ranky...

San Francisco Jazz

Chris Botti

San Francisco Jazz

Amelie Anna

San Francisco Jazz

Julian Lage, Solo Guitar

San Francisco Jazz

Jo Harrop

San Francisco Jazz

Julian Lage: Rude Ruth

San Francisco Jazz

Nicolas Bearde

San Francisco Jazz

Julian Lage Quartet: Musi...

San Francisco Jazz

Julian Lage Quartet: Jim ...

San Francisco Jazz

Rubin Kodheli

San Francisco Jazz

Paolo Angeli

San Francisco Jazz

Madness & Mayhem

American Bach Soloists