In a Jan­u­ary with­out snow, there’s not much excuse not to get out of the house. And after what amounted to a long, lan­guid pause from Christ­mas through the first week of the new year, there are enough entic­ing events to plan for that no one, myself included, will be able to make it to all of them. No mat­ter how much we want to. Pick and choose from below, these are all highly recommended:

Through Jan­u­ary 29: New York Gui­tar Fes­ti­val — the 2012 install­ment of this annual event should be a crowd-pleaser. The cen­ter­piece is new music from the likes of Dan Zanes, Lee Ranaldo, Nuke & Gase and My Bright­est Dia­mond, play­ing new music along­side silent films from Buster Keaton. There’s also a con­cert hon­or­ing Jim Hall, the Alter­na­tive Gui­tar Sum­mit, and more.

Jan­u­ary 9: This date inau­gu­rates a new series at Hous­ing Works, “Safe Space,” which con­nects clas­si­cal musi­cians and writ­ers in per­for­mance and con­ver­sa­tion. The open­ing event brings you Jonathan Biss (who both plays and writes about Beethoven won­der­fully) and Adam Haslett, while future events will have Jeremy Denk and Nadia Sirota. The ticket is $12, not only a great value but a great cause: all sales ben­e­fit the venue and the work to ame­lio­rate AIDS and homelessness.

Jan­u­ary 12: A double-bill at Roulette of the Quasar Sax­o­phone Quar­tet and Jason Kao Hwang lead­ing his ensem­ble Local Lingo. The quar­tet is play­ing music from Luc Mar­cel, Xenakis and a piece from com­poser Jean-Francois Laporte that uses cus­tom wood­wind instru­ments he built for the per­for­mance. They’re also play­ing a work by Hwang, an excel­lent impro­vis­ing vio­lin­ist and intrigu­ing com­poser. He has two strong, rec­om­mended discs out this past year, Cross­roads Unseen, with his quar­tet Edge (Hwang, Tay­lor Ho Bynum, Andrew Drury and Ken Fil­iano), and Spon­tanous River, with music Hwang has writ­ten for a cham­ber orches­tra sized string ensem­ble. Each dis­plays his virtues as a musi­cian and com­poser. Edge plays knotty, dex­ter­ous instru­men­tal lines with a dance­able sense of groove and rhythm, while the music on Spon­ta­neous River is a finely crafted and very sat­is­fy­ing com­bi­na­tion of free­dom and struc­ture, it’s an espe­cially impres­sive record­ing. Local Lingo is a mon­ster band, with Sang Won Park, William Parker, Thomas Buck­ner, and Joe McPhee, and they’ll be play­ing music set­ting the poetry of Lester Afflick, Fay Chi­ang, Steve Dalachin­sky, Patri­cia Spears Jones and Yuko Otomo.

Jan­u­ary 13: This is the day the Amer­i­can Wing at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Museum of Art reopens, and fol­low­ing that is a series of intrigu­ing con­certs of Amer­i­can music, part of Limor Tomer’s fas­ci­nat­ing pro­gram­ming. On the 20th, the Asphalt Orches­tra marches through the Met and on the 22nd, Thomas Hamp­son brings his won­der­ful “Songs of Amer­ica” pro­gram to the museum.

Jan­u­ary 22: How to choose? If Hamp­son is not your tea, go hear Matt Haimovitz and Christo­pher O’Riley bring their Shuffle.Play.Listen record­ing — one of the best discs of 2011 — to the High­line Ball­room.

Jan­u­ary 27: Stan Ken­ton remains both impor­tant and con­tro­ver­sial — just ask David Hajdu — for his at times rad­i­cally bom­bas­tic anti-jazz atti­tude, all while mak­ing jazz. Like him or not, Ken­ton was nec­es­sary, tak­ing chances, often suc­ceed­ing, and chal­leng­ing jazz’s smug assump­tions about itself. His Cen­ten­nial passed in Decem­ber, and it will be cel­e­brated in a series of con­certs, the first one at the Man­hat­tan School of Music.

Jan­u­ary 27 — Feb­ru­ary 3: There’s another Cen­ten­nial this year, and land­mark one, that of the birth of John Cage. There will be per­for­mances and new record releases all year, and the first big event is the Juil­liard FOCUS! 2012 fes­ti­val, devoted to Cage. These six free con­certs join the music of Cage with his most vital peers, like Henry Cow­ell and Lou Harrison.

Jan­u­ary 27 — Feb­ru­ary 6: The Com­posers Con­cor­dance Fes­ti­val, near­ing thirty years of pro­duc­tion, spans the Hud­son and a series of con­certs that explore songs, the blues, ensem­ble music and electronics.

Jan­u­ary 31: Philip Glass is turn­ing 75 this year, and the cel­e­bra­tions, of which there are a few, begin with this con­cert at Carnegie Hall. The Amer­ica Com­posers Orches­tra, with Den­nis Rus­sell Davies return­ing at the podium, will be pre­mier­ing Glass’ Sym­phony No. 9 and bring­ing Aro Pärt’s “Lamen­tate” to New York City for the first time.

Jan­u­ary 31: Johann Johannsson’s som­bre and lovely new record­ing, The Miner’s Hymns, comes to you live at the Win­ter Gar­den, with a show­ing of Bill Morrison’s accom­pa­ny­ing film.

Feb­ru­ary 2: Simone Din­ner­stein will be play­ing music from her upcom­ing release at Miller The­atre. She’s a Brook­lyn favorite, and deservedly so because of her work with music in the com­mu­nity, but she’s also the real thing, a great pianist and one of the finest con­tem­po­rary Bach players.

Feb­ru­ary 4 — March 28: The Ecsta­tic Music Fes­ti­val returns after it’s win­ning ini­tial series. Judd Green­stein has put together another excit­ing com­bi­na­tion of new music of all kinds; con­tem­po­rary clas­si­cal, pop, rock and … other .… ?

Feb­ru­ary 12: Almost a year of tri­als and tribu­la­tions for New York City Opera will come to a point, of one kind or another, at the open­ing night of their new sea­son. La Travi­ata at BAM will be quickly fol­lowed by Rufus Wainwright’s Prima Donna and Cosi fan Tutte. That is, of course, if the sea­son actu­ally gets started — the take­away from this arti­cle is the clos­ing quote: “City Opera’s death rests squarely on the shoul­ders of Chuck Wall,” chair­man of the City Opera board.

Feb­ru­ary 14: With the imp­ish irrev­er­ence that only Steven Blier can bring to the recital stage, NYFOS returns on Valentine’s Day with “A Mod­ern Person’s Guide to Hook­ing Up and Break­ing Up” (Descrip­tion), repeated on the 16th.

Feb­ru­ary 23 — 26: The Tune-In fes­ti­val returns to the Park Avenue Armory. Last year’s was one of the finest con­cert events of recent years, and this year’s is an ambi­tious trib­ute to Glass. The high­lights are con­cert per­for­mances of two works that were not only essen­tial aes­thetic and intel­lec­tual break­throughs for him but are impor­tant mas­ter­pieces of the late 20th cen­tury: Music in Twelve Parts and Another Look at Har­mony.

Feb­ru­ary 28: It’s a reunion for Joan Jean­re­naud and the Kro­nos Quar­tet, at Zankel Hall, where she will be play­ing music with the group from their new CD, Music of Vladimir Mar­tynov. There will be four pre­mieres, includ­ing what’s promised to be a major new work from Don­nacha Dennehy.