The South Bay Guitar Society presents the San Francisco Guitar Quartet in concert May 17. The program highlights works by contemporary composers including Paulo Bellinatti, Dusan Bogdanovic, Leo Brouwer, Carlo Domeniconi, Phillip Houghton and Celso Machado. The quartet's debut recording, Black Opal, which was released in 2002, features works by many of these composers.

Since the quartet's founding in 1997, the group has quickly become known—and loved—for its penchant for improvisation and experimentation and its blending of influences from around the world into the sound of classical guitar.

The quartet's diverse and daring style might be attributed to the unique musicians that make up the group. David Dueñas teaches at a number of Bay Area institutions, including Santa Clara University and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Patrick Francis teaches at the University of San Francisco and works as a composer and arranger as well. He recently appeared as a soloist in a guitar concerto by Belinda Reynolds that received its debut with the Berkeley Symphony last month. A Fulbright and Peabody scholarship recipient, Mark Smith has performed on National Public Radio and has taught extensively.

The San Francisco Guitar Quartet performs Saturday, May 17, 8 p.m., at Le Petit Trianon, 72 N. Fifth St., San Jose. Tickets are $15­$18. For more information, call 408.292.0704 or visit www.sbgs.org.

Beethoven at SJSU

Pianist Ian Hobson is a Renaissance man in all things musical. Sought after as both a soloist and a conductor with orchestras worldwide, Hobson is also a teacher and the founder of a chamber orchestra and of a classical record label.

Local audiences will get to enjoy Hobson's artistry as an instrumentalist firsthand when he performs May 16 in an all-Beethoven recital jointly sponsored by the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies and the College of Humanities and the Arts at San José State University.

Hobson serves as a professor of music at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he has been given the institution's highest endowed title.

Taking first prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition in 1981 kick-started Hobson's multifaceted international career.

Hobson has recorded extensively, as both a solo artist and with Sinfonia da Camera, the chamber orchestra he founded in 1984.

An inaugural release for Zephyr Records which he founded was Hobson's recording of the Complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas. The album has been extremely well-received critically, which surely bodes well for Hobson's May 16 recital: The program will feature Sonata in F Major, Opus 10, No. 2, Prometheus (Eroica) Variations, Opus 35 and Hammerklavier Sonata, Opus 106.

Ian Hobson performs May 16, 8 p.m. at the Music Concert Hall at San José State University. Dr. William Meredith discusses the "Prometheus Variations" in a pre-concert lecture at 7 p.m. Call 408.924.4590.