Hope you’ll join Hoyt and me for our 3rd annual Family Day at the San Jose Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose on Saturday March 20. The museum is free all day and is one of the great family experiences in the Bay Area.  Still on view is the Star Trek exhibit and also on view Saturday the 20th will be Hoyt and me doing a live broadcast from The Tech.  This is a wonderful opportunity for us to meet our South Bay listeners (and you are legion).  So grab the kids and come on down for the live broadcast and stay for live music and dance performances to follow!

The Tech's bright purple dome

Every year it seems Beethoven’s mighty 9th Symphony conquers the KDFC Top 100 Classical All-Stars.  Can you predict what will be #1 when we reveal your absolute favorite soundtrack this Friday at 5p?  Check out the list so far here and see if your fave has already aired.  Will the Top 10 be dominated by John Williams? Will one of the younger film composers prevail, eg. Alexandre Desplat, Randy Newman, James Horner? How important is a great soundtrack to a movie?  Tell us which movie score should win and why.  Predict the winner right here with a comment to this blog.

Will Max Steiner's greatest score be #1?

The organizers of “The Year of Chopin” in the composer’s native Poland weren’t sure which date to use to commemorate his 200th anniversary.  There is a birth certificate on file with February 22 1810 listed as the date but Chopin himself always stated his birthday as March 1st. What to do?  How about a marathon concert spanning the entire 7 day period between the two dates?  Works for me.  171 hours of non-stop Chopin, including concerts nightly by the Warsaw Philharmonic with a who’s who of great pianists as soloists.  KDFC celebrates this Monday with Chopin’s music every hour plus he’ll be feted by us throughout 2010!

Our next KDFC at Yoshi’s concert is coming up this Monday March 1 and it will feature the guitarist Gyan Riley.  I caught up with Gyan by phone yesterday in L.A.,  recording a new CD with the Falla Guitar Quartet.  The first thing I asked him about was his unusual name.  Was I pronouncing it correctly?  Apparently he always tells people to think “Gyan with the Wind”, so it’s almost one syllable.  Got it!

Click below to listen to my interview:

Stayed up late watching the men’s figure skating on TV last night.  Had to switch away when the performances were too heart-breaking to watch.  Some of these guys chose to skate to classical music.  Did you hear the Concierto de Aranjuez, The Firebird, and the William Tell Overture?  Fun stuff although the Jimi Hendrix wasn’t half bad!

Johnny Weir

Yes, that’s what they’re calling it, the historic snow storms that have socked the Mid-Atlantic,  including Washington D.C.   Most years this would be of mild interest to me.  Just something to make me feel grateful for living in the Bay Area but this January, my daughter Monica transferred from UC San Diego  (where it is always sunny and never even rains!) to George Washington University, smack dab in the middle of D.C.  I’m one of those moms who worries over the littlest things so you can imagine my level of anxiety when I read about how these storms are worse than anything anyone’s seen since the days of Washington himself.  Remember Valley Forge? Anyway, she’s absolutely fine and actually enjoying the novelty of snow.  She even participated in a midnight all-campus snowball fight.  Now that’s something that would be hard to duplicate in San Diego!

And New Zealand is even more “under” than Australia!  Among other things, our trip was one big geography lesson for me.  Below the equator and across the International Dateline for the first time in my life and we had a great time.  This was really my husband Jim’s dream vacation.  He figures he only has so many years left when he can still do crazy things like canyoning, sledging, street luging, white water rafting, black water rafting, exciting jet boat trips up and down beautiful rivers and swimming with the dolphins. Believe it or not, we did all these things.  We did draw the line at bungy-jumping.

Here are my Top 3 NZ highlights: the people, the scenery, the food.  The Kiwis were friendly, kind and helpful to a person.  The landscape, especially in the South Island, was stunning and the food surprised us.  Breakfasts were generous and scrumptious at the fun and luxurious B & B’s where we stayed and we ate at amazing restaurants everywhere we went.  Plenty of lamb of course, venison and great beef but also delicious vegetables and fruits (it is summer down there right now).

Here are a few photos of our adventures:

Rippon Winery on Lake Wanaka

Down the 7 meter waterfall in the Kaituna River

The exquisite Milford Sound

My crazy husband "canyoning"

Whenever tragedy strikes, we look for ways to help and the San Francisco Boys Choir is putting together a benefit concert that gives us all a chance to do something positive for Haiti.  On Sunday January 24 at 5pm, the choir will be joined by the great Frederica von Stade (who it seems never tires of donating her time and talent to worthy causes).  The concert also features members of the SF Opera Chorus and organist Rudy de Vos.  The setting is the stunning new Cathedral of Christ the Light on Oakland’s Lake Merritt.  Click here for all the details.

…plus Baby Newsom sighting.  ACT celebrated the 100th anniversary of its home on Saturday with an open house that attracted hundreds of folks throughout the day.  The cutest participant of the day was Montana Newsom (below), making her media debut.  (Mom Jennifer is an ACT graduate).  The day was such a success that ACT is extending their Phedre ticket deal to tomorrow.  You can buy tickets for just 19.10 for any performance of Phedre.  1910 was the year that the theatre opened.

Reading the New York Times’ description of Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andnes’ recent performance at New York’s big Apple Store at Lincoln Center, I couldn’t help but think of our KDFC Casual Concerts.  Leif played for about 50 minutes, chatting between pieces with a small but appreciative audience. That’s exactly the format for our in-lobby concerts with some of the world’s finest musicians.  The setting was the very cool glass-enclosed store in the city’s performing arts nexus.  A classical concert in an unexpected venue?  Again, sounds like us!  See KDFC at Yoshi’s concert series news below.