Few things in life give me more pleasure than having a cup of classical music coffee on a sunny San Diego morning. If I actually drank coffee it would probably be even better. Even so, …

It’s the time of year when San Diego’s classical music collective consciousness bends its attention to The Mainly Mozart Festival. This year’s iteration takes place June 10-18 at the Surf Sports Park, formerly known as …

On May 6, 2022, the first commercial recording of Rafael Payare conducting the San Diego Symphony will be released on the Platoon label. The subject of the recording is Dimitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 11: The …

I opened Facebook on Sunday evening, April 10. As I began scrolling as saw a post announcing Brahms’s Requiem at Mission Valley United Methodist with members of the San Diego Symphony at 7:00 pm. I …

Given the final performances of Charles Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette are in the books, the San Diego Opera mainstage season is at an end. The season consisted of Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte and the aforementioned …

Charles Gounod’s Romeo et Juliet opened at the San Diego Opera on Saturday, March 26, at the Civic Theatre in lavish production proving that opera is still a reality in San Diego. This production had …

West Side Story as directed by Steven Spielberg is currently streaming on HBOMax and Disney+. I have long thought about having my kids, ages 18 and 14, watch the original so I thought this was …

I was golfing with a friend at San Diego’s classic Balboa Park Golf Course when he suddenly started playing opera on the Bluetooth speaker he had mounted in one of the cup holders. Previously, the …

Way back in October of 2018, Valery Gergiev stopped by San Diego with the Mariinsky Orchestra and performed Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7: Leningrad. The symphony was written between 1941 and 1942 during the German siege …

Martha Gilmer, CEO of the San Diego Symphony, has announced a major project to restore and renovate its historic home, the Jacobs Music Center. The project, with an estimated cost of $125 million, will honor …

There is a phenomenon happening among fans of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings The upcoming Amazon Original show The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has created a title wave of …

I attended San Diego Opera’s production of Cosi fan Tutte on Saturday, February 12. I was somewhat dismayed at what I saw. The singers were fine. The production was yet another ill-conceived re-imagining of a …

Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte opens at San Diego Opera on Saturday, February 12, 2022, at the Civic Theatre. This is the first time SDO has performed a fully staged indoor opera since Hansel and Gretel …

The San Diego Symphony gave their first indoor concerts in nearly two years on January 29 and 30, 2020. I was scheduled to attend on the 30th. I started to develop some omicron symptoms on …

I miss nationalism in classical music. Nationalism is looked upon by certain contemporary elements as bad because the nations in question were colonial powers, and colonialism was bad. I take a different perspective. Nationalism started …

The end of January and the entirety of February appear to be a return to some semblance of normality with the San Diego Opera and San Diego Symphony. Of course, there's always a chance of …

“Due to the recent surge of Covid-19 cases in San Diego County and after consulting with local health experts, the San Diego Symphony has made the difficult decision to cancel this concert.” Thus reads the …

Every now and then I wonder about composers of classical one-hit-wonders. You know, composers such as Ruggero Leoncavallo with Pagliacci, Pietro Mascagni with Cavalleria Rusticana, or Max Bruch with his Violin Concerto. What else did …

I was watching an NFL game while scrolling through Instagram stories when I came across a clip of the Act Finale from Verdi’s La Traviata. Violetta implores Alfredo to love her as she departs for …

From time to time I find it necessary to update “The Depressed-Disney-Dad at Christmas when his Ex has the Kids” playlist. This playlist is also known as “Contemplations Upon the Mysteries of Solitude at the …

This is the time of year when we ordinarily take a look back over the previous season and select the top concerts. We could do that, but 2021 was not an ordinary year for classical …

‘Tis the season for Christmas music. We all know the Christmas warhorses such as Georg Handel’s The Messiah, J.S. Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, and Pytor Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. Maybe some of us are also familiar with …

The San Diego Symphony has announced its winter-spring 2022 concert. The Symphony is offering 31 performances from January 15 through May 28. Presented as “Hear Us Here,” the season will give the San Diego Symphony …

I’ve been dabbling in opera tourism this fall and decided to go full-send with a trip to New York. I looked at the schedule for The Metropolitan Opera and saw that Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger …

Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker has been cleared from quarantine and is returning to The Civic Theater. Those familiar with The Nutcracker as it has been performed at The Civic in the past will recognize this production. …

The San Diego Symphony has released a report on the first two months of concerts at The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park. The numbers are impressive. In August, there were 15 paid events, which drew …

Alessandro Stradella is a name that might ring a bell with champions of early Baroque music. As for me, I knew he existed, but beyond a short Sinfonia from his Christmas Eve Cantata, I wasn’t …

Given the current circumstances, San Diego Opera is producing two mainstage opera productions this season. What is an opera fan to do with that? Two productions just aren’t enough to satiate some the most dedicated …

One of the major themes in Richard Wagner’s 1845 opera Tannhäuser is pilgrimage. With that in mind, I took a pilgrimage to LA Opera to see their current production of the show. (San Diego Opera …

Bernard Haitink had died. He was 92. He was the last of the great mid-20th Century conductors who came to worldwide prominence via the recording industry. Starting in 1961, Haitink was the first conductor of …

Mahler and Tchaikovsky are two of the most popular composers for modern audiences. Rarely are they scheduled together on the same concert, but on Saturday, October 17, that’s exactly what happened with the San Diego …

The September version of The San Diego Mainly Mozart Festival concluded with two spectacular concerts on Friday, September 17, and Saturday, September 18. At the final concert, Mainly Mozart CEO Nancy Laturno confirmed that the …

After attending just the first three concerts at the San Diego Mainly Mozart Festival, I concluded that it was, once again, a musical affair to remember. Mainly Mozart is onto something quite simple yet profound. …

My 50th birthday is approaching all too quickly, With that in mind, I feel as though I should take an inventory of how I got here. Recently, I met with a good friend and we …

Opera singer Ryan Speedo Green proved a very important point during his performance at The Rady Shell during the opening night concert on August 7. Mr. Green proved that opera, when done well, appeals to …

I came to San Diego in the fall of 1990. All through the decade, I took advantage of the chance to buy student tickets for the San Diego Symphony and the San Diego Opera. However, …

On July 28, 2021, the classical music and opera worlds celebrated conductor Riccardo Muti’s 80th birthday. The next day, I found out that one of my opera heroes had died on the same day. Giuseppe …

The ideology of woke culture is one thing. Meditating every day and thereby developing the ability to effectively respond to life’s situations instead of merely reacting, is another. Meditation is the path to a consistently …

As we are in mid-July, summer should be in full swing. With that in mind, let’s take a look at five pieces of music that inhabit the tone of summer. There is one caveat here, …

The San Diego Opera has announced a season for 2021-2022. There’s some very good news here. Productions of Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette and Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte headline the season, along with a concert by …

The Mainly Mozart Festival concluded on Saturday, June 19 with Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. There were also concerts on Wednesday, June 16, and Friday, June 18. Each of those …

The San Diego Mainly Mozart Festival got off to a rambunctious start on Friday, June 11, 2021, at the San Diego Surf Soccer Club in Del Mar. The orchestra roster is as strong as ever. …

An insurmountable mountain of facts proves that we are living in the best period of known human history. Maybe things were better in pre-history when the aliens were here, but from infant mortality rates to …

The La Jolla Music Society (LJMS) has announced its SummerFest 2021, which will be held from Friday, July 30 - Friday, August 20, 2021, at The Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center in La Jolla. The …

The Mainly Mozart Festival is coming back into form on Friday, June 11. The incomparable Festival Orchestra is scheduled to perform five concerts at the Del Mar Surf Cup Sports Park June 11-19. The repertoire …

The opening of the Rady Shell at the Jacobs Park featuring performances on the Una Davis Family Stage is imminent. As one might surmise from all the titles surrounding the Shell project, the San Diego …

Each generation of young opera singers eventually becomes familiar with some of the great opera singers of the past. I’ve seen this happen, first hand, at least a dozen times. I must admit that I …

The San Diego Symphony continued their run of string serenade live streams on Friday, April 29. In February the symphony string section performed Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings. In March is was Dvorak’s Serenade for Strings …

I want to talk a little bit about choir. I’ve been singing in choirs since the seventh grade. I was in a choir every year from junior high through college. During my first year in …

There are famous orchestras around the world. We’ve all heard of Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics. We know about the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Concertgebouw. The United States used to have a “big five” …