Critic’s Picks

Music lovers with the itch to get out of town this summer should. The Mainly Mozart Festival, June 2-17, for instance, is held mainly in San Diego--but also in La Jolla, Tijuana and Rosarito Beach. “Mainly” means concerts of music by not just Mozart but Vivaldi, Beethoven, Haydn, Brahms, Chopin, Rachmaninoff and even the exciting young Mexican composer Javier Alvarez, as well as Argentine tango master Astor Piazzolla. And this festival, under the direction of the excellent British conductor David Atherton, has an impressive list of performers, including first chair players from the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic.

A good weekend getaway in July and August is an orchestra concert at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, where outstanding young players are led by important conductors. Notable this year will be the July 21 performance of Mahler’s overwhelmingly emotional Ninth Symphony, led by another major British conductor, Jeffrey Tate.

Stay home and you are likely to wind up at the Hollywood Bowl, where a different great Ninth Symphony, Beethoven’s, will be performed July 24 by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the illuminating Swiss conductor Matthias Bamert. Big is always better at the Bowl, and that alone makes a potential highlight out of Verdi’s “Aida,” in a July 8 concert performance by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra under John Mauceri; Alessandra Marc, whose whopping, thrilling soprano could probably fill the expanses without a microphone, sings the title role. Opera-going, otherwise, is slim warm-weather fare, although the often provocative Long Beach Opera presents Strauss’ “Elektra,” June 10 and 16.

If a single avant-gardely produced opera is not enough summer adventure, a new series, “sound. at the Schindler House,” opens with an appearance by William Winant, an astonishing Bay Area percussionist. He’ll be playing works for percussion and electronics by the experimental composer, James Tenney on June 30. Setting and sound promise something special.