You might want to read this piece to the accompaniment of a double trumpet fanfare. Gifted Berkeley composers and musicians Dylan Mattingly and Preben Antonsen are off to East Coast colleges this fall, leaving many an awed local audience, music teacher, and even celebrity composer John Adams gaping after them. The once-competitive colleagues discuss their musical roots, their friendship, and why they’re so crazy about classical.

After 30 years of conducting new and classic masterpieces from the podium of the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, Music Director Kent Nagano steps down this month. Portugal’s Joana Carneiro, who instantly connected with the orchestra while conducting here for the first time, will take his place.

Robert Cole has spent two decades transforming Cal Performances into a destination for world-class artists and one of the nation’s top venues. The 77-year-old Cole is now leaving the post he shaped and elevated. He talks about his 23 years at the helm and what he anticipates will come next for Cal Performances.

Frederica von Stade, known to all as “Flicka,” stars in Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer’s chamber opera Three Decembers. A collaboration with the San Francisco Opera, the Cal Performances show is an intimate look at three decades of relationships between glamorous actress Madeline Mitchell and her two grown children, including one whose lover is ill with AIDS. The opera showcases the magic of Flicka and Heggie.