San Francisco

With much of the classical music here focused on the starry 70th-birthday celebration that the San Francisco Symphony threw for its music director, Michael Tilson Thomas, it would have been easy to miss New Music Gathering 2015, a feisty, hybrid festival and conference that last Thursday through Saturday took over the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, just a short walk down Van Ness Avenue from Davies Symphony Hall. The Gathering was assembled by four Brooklyn, N.Y., composers—Lainie Fefferman, Daniel Felsenfeld,...