Taken together, a multifaceted portrait of Cage has taken shape in a way that no single concert could achieve.

The Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, which is unconventional in so many ways, proves that there can be an enthusiastic audience for contemporary music in a smaller community.

sfSound’s most recent concert celebrating the centenary of John Cage featured works spanning over half a century. The following week, the experimental music collective Outsound Presents presented the annual Outsound New Music Summit.

The brainchild of organizer Sarah Cahill, this inimitable event, which is presented by New Music Bay Area and the chapel, features several dozen Bay Area artists scattered throughout the labyrinthine and photogenic facility.

The Spirit of ’76 finally touched down at the San Francisco Opera with the first local performances of John Adams’s Nixon in China, a quarter century after the work’s creation.

Chicago conductor Edwin Outwater steps in for an injured Joana Carneiro to lead the world premiere of Holy Sisters, a Berkeley Symphony commission from Gabriela Lena Frank, for orchestra, soprano Jessica Rivera, and the San Francisco Girls Chorus.

This year’s smorgasbord of artists included a guitar ensemble from the conservatory, a one-man piano/percussion “duo,” a two-man guitar/percussion actual duo, an electro-acoustic ensemble with strings and electronics, and a band that was described as “hobbit rock.”

The San Francisco Symphony has been celebrating its centennial season this year with a slew of ambitious programs, including the return last month of its American Mavericks festival.

This year’s event (March 1–3) included a characteristically diverse group of nine composers, including 75-year-old Harold Budd and 31-year-old Tyshawn Sorey; Berkeley-based Ken Ueno and Lotta Wennäkoski from Finland; and glissando virtuoso Gloria Coates and laptop improviser Ikue Mori.

This well-attended new chamber version of Gatsby, staged over three nights on the main stage at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts by Ensemble Parallèle, featured a slightly abridged version of the score (approximately half an hour was cut) in a newly commissioned re-orchestration by Jacques Desjardins.