Best Local Classical Music

It’s not just the fashionable whiff of geeky technological coolness that makes Sonic Generator the current frontrunner in Atlanta’s new classical music scene. The seven core members are all top-level pros, even without electricity (three are also members of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra). The group’s cutting-edge concerts have included such innovations as a robot musician playing an acoustic instrument and a composition performed on a quartet of iPhones. Since 2006, the group has developed a devoted, predominantly younger audience through its music-and-technology mashups, and it reached a milestone in June by performing a 10-hour contemporary music marathon at the Woodruff Arts Center. By pairing such creative collisions with an increasing emphasis on younger living composers, Sonic Gen has helped raise the city’s artistic profile a few notches on the national scene. distributedmusic.gatech.edu/sg less...

The ATLANTA SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA & CHORUS should be counted as one of the city’s true major-league teams, alongside the Braves. With more than 100 CDs and 23 Grammys among its members, the 95-member orchestra and its allied 200-member volunteer chorus have long shaken the foundations of that old-fashioned assumption that anything truly worthwhile in American classical music must come from New York City. The Braves have Turner Field, and the Falcons have the Georgia Dome. Now, the question is whether the community will pony up the cash to build the symphony a new hall designed by Santiago Calatrava.
www.atlantasymphony.org.

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