“Trio”: Three Upcoming NorCal Events We Think You’ll Enjoy Each Week

• SF Symphony: Esa-Pekka Salonen and Nico Muhly

On Friday and Saturday, Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts a world premiere by composer Nico Muhly at the San Francisco Symphony. Muhly’s new Baroque-inspired Piano Concerto is surrounded by three other works of time-hopping, genre-swapping proto-postmodernism: Paul Hindemith’s Ragtime, based on a theme by J.S. Bach; Edward Elgar’s inventive transcription of Bach’s Fantasia & Fugue in C minor; and Hindemith’s Symphony Mathis der Maler. Tickets and information here.

• Cal Performances: Cultural Spheres: Njioma Chinyere Grevious

Dynamic violinist Njioma Chinyere Grevious makes her Cal Performances debut Sunday in a recital that showcases her technique and versatility. A 2024 winner of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, Grevious will play the rarely-performed solo work Blue/s Forms by Black American composer Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson. Beethoven’s brilliant Kreutzer sonata and Mozart’s elegiac E minor sonata round out the program Sunday, September 29, 3PM at Hertz Hall on the campus of UC Berkeley. Tickets and information here.

• FREE: Prometheus Symphony: 60th Anniversary Concert

Spoiler alert: EVERYBODY DIES in the pieces that the Prometheus Symphony is playing in their Sun, September 29 concert at 3PM. On the bright side, the music is fantastic! Plus it's their Diamond Anniversary Season (60 years), so the audience is invited to a party in the courtyard at intermission. Hear music by Verdi, Sibelius, and Berlioz at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Oakland. The concert is free, but advance tickets are required.  More information here.