Last night at the San Francisco Symphony, Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas conducted an extended seminar on Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, explaining how the 1937 work, which restored the composer to good odor with Soviet arts commissars at the height of Stalin’s terror, was actually a musical cry of dismay at incipient fascism. The lecture and the concert were taped for the PBS series Keeping Score. The concert repeats tonight.

Today the New York Times has a nice piece on San Francisco’s Church of St. John Coltrane, the unique mix of traditional Christian liturgy, American storefront gospel, and mid-20th century jazz. The later compositions and performances of Coltrane (pictured at left) (official site) are regarded as spiritually inspired, and inspiring.

Search SFGate for tonight’s musical events.