Performer: Calder Quartet

SPF 6, the sixth annual Summer Performance Festival for fledgling modern dance companies in San Francisco, closed on Sunday with an irresistible chamber ballet by The Milissa Payne Project that brought down the house at the small-but-splendid ODC Theater in the hip Mission district.

At Lincoln Center’s Stanley Kaplan Penthouse, music drips through the air like wax from the candles on the tables scattered throughout the space. At late-night concerts, part of the annual Mostly Mozart Festival, concert-goers can listen to works by and influenced by Mozart while drinking wine and drinking in the view from the tenth floor.

How are young quartets in America capable of scratching together a living in this exciting, uncertain time? Players from eight young quartets tell us how it happens.