About

The series is a descendant of the original concert series developed by Dame Myra Hess. Noontime Concerts™ is part of an international network of churches, museums, and other venues offering a welcome midday respite amidst the hustle and bustle of urban life.

Fulfilling the vision of internationally renowned vocalist Alexandra Ivanoff, Noontime Concerts has remained a treasured Bay Area landmark, presenting hundreds of classical concerts performed by outstanding local and international musicians each Tuesday afternoon in the heart of San Francisco. Founded at Old St. Mary’s Cathedral, the series is now in its 34th year and is recognized as a valued local institution that continues to fulfill its mission to enrich the community and cultural life of the Bay Area.

Noontime Concerts are not ticketed but suggested donations are solicited to ensure all can enjoy performances regardless of ability to pay. Low-cost live musical performances are offered at a time convenient for downtown workers, visitors to San Francisco, students, shoppers, and music lovers in general. Currently, Noontime Concerts are presented weekly on Tuesdays at 12:30 in historic Old Saint Mary’s Cathedral and on one Sunday each month from April through November at the historic San Francisco Mint.

Noontime’s home at Old St. Mary’s provides an environment in many cases very consistent with the venues for which many classical compositions were originally written.

At its completion in 1853, Old St. Mary’s was both the first cathedral and the tallest building in the new state of California. Restored after San Francisco’s devastating earthquake and fire of 1906, it was rededicated in 1909. The historic cathedral remains an important San Francisco landmark and a beautiful and serene setting for concerts.

Noontime Concerts Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement

Noontime Concerts DEI Means Everyone

Noontime Concerts at its core is a diverse and inclusive outreach organization where all employees, volunteers, and constituents whatever their gender; race; ethnicity; national origin; age; sexual orientation; gender identity; education; or personal challenge are encouraged, valued, and respected. We are committed to a nondiscriminatory approach and provide equal opportunity for employment, advancement, and participation in all of our functional areas, programs, and venues.

We respect and value diverse life experiences and heritages.

We aspire to demonstrate equity by modeling and maintaining diversity and inclusion for the arts community of the nonprofit sector.

To provide informed authentic leadership for cultural equity Noontime Concerts strives to:

• Encourage and support board-level thinking about how systemic inequities impact our organization’s work and how best to address that in a way that is consistent with our mission.
• Acknowledge and dismantle any inequities within our policies, systems, programs, and services and continually update organization progress.
• Explore potential underlying unquestioned assumptions and unconscious biases that interfere with inclusiveness.
• Challenge assumptions about what it takes to be a strong leader at our organization and who is well-positioned to provide leadership.
• Practice transparent communication in all interactions.
• Commit time and resources to expand more diverse leadership within our board, staff, committee, and advisory bodies.
• Lead and collaborate with respect and tolerance. We expect all employees and contractors to embrace this notion and to express it in workplace interactions and through everyday practices.

Noontime Concerts abides by the following action items to help promote diversity and inclusion in our workplace:

• Evaluate and encourage cultural competency throughout our organization by creating substantive learning opportunities and transparent policies.
• Access quantitative and qualitative research related to equity to make incremental measurable progress toward the visibility of our diversity, inclusion, and equity efforts.
• Improve our cultural leadership by creating and supporting programs and policies that foster leadership reflective of the diversity of our community and the American society.
• Pool resources and expand offerings for underrepresented constituents by connecting with other arts organizations committed to diversity and inclusion efforts.
• Develop a system or protocol for being more intentional and conscious of bias during the hiring, promoting, or evaluating process. Seek training on equitable practices.
• Include a salary range with all public job descriptions.
• Advocate for public and private-sector policies that promote diversity, inclusion, and equity. Challenge systems and policies that create inequity, oppression, and disparity.
• Historic cathedral remains an important San Francisco landmark and a beautiful and serene setting for concerts.

A motivation for inclusion is implicit in the Noontime Concerts’ long-standing mission to make classical music accessible to everyone. While there is a dedicated commitment to our mission there is also an awareness of the perceived exclusivity of the genre, given that the predominant repertoire presented by Noontime Concerts is from the Western European tradition, a society that practiced racism and exclusion which continues today. With that awareness comes the acknowledgment of the diverse roots of classical music instrumentation and composition and the recognition that we cannot be a fully inclusive organization until we equitably expand our definition and presentation of “classical music” to include a diversity of people and cultures. We embrace this challenge as a call to action as we do our part to welcome the classical music genre as among the family of musical traditions from across the globe; music that is created by, played by, and enjoyed by Everyone.