The San Francisco Symphony Chorus was established in 1973 at the request of Seiji Ozawa, then the Symphony’s Music Director; the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, numbering thirty-two professional and more than 120 volunteer members, performs more than twenty-six concerts each season. Louis Magor served as the Chorus’s director during its first decade. In 1982 Margaret Hillis assumed the ensemble’s leadership, and the following year Vance George was named Chorus Director, serving through 2005-06. Ragnar Bohlin assumed the position of Chorus Director in March 2007. The Chorus can be heard on many acclaimed recordings, including Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and Mahler’s Symphonies Nos. 2, 3, and 8 (with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting), choral works of Brahms, Mahler’s Das klagende Lied, Stravinsky’s Perséphone, selections from Berlioz’s Lélio, and John Adams’s Harmonium. The ensemble has received Grammy awards for Best Performance of a Choral Work (for Orff’s Carmina burana, Brahms’s German Requiem, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 8) and Best Classical Album (for a collection of Stravinsky’s music including Perséphone, The Firebird, and Le Sacre du printemps; and for Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 and Symphony No. 8).

Ragnar Bohlin began his tenure as SFS Chorus Director in 2007. Mr. Bohlin served as choirmaster of Stockholm’s Maria Magdalena Church and holds degrees from the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm. He studied conducting with Eric Ericson and Jorma Panula, piano with Peter Feuchtwanger in London, singing with Nicolai Gedda, and through a Sweden-America Foundation scholarship he visited choruses throughout the US. With Stockholm’s KFUM Chamber Choir, the Maria Magdalena Motet Choir, and the Maria Vocal Ensemble, Mr. Bohlin has won numerous prizes in international competitions. Currently teaching at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, he has also taught at the Royal Academy in Stockholm and been a visiting professor at Indiana University and Miami University. With the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus, he has conducted Handel’s Messiah, Fauré’s Requiem, Orff’s Carmina burana, and J.S. Bach’s Magnificat, Christmas Oratorio, and B minor Mass. Mr. Bohlin’s guest conducting engagements have included appearances with the São Paulo Symphony in Brazil, Malmö Symphony in Sweden, Stavanger Symphony in Norway, the Edmonton Symphony in Canada, and the Ericson Chamber Choir in Mozart’s C minor Mass. In 2018 he leads the BBC Singers and Swedish Radio Choir. Mr. Bohlin is the founding Artistic Director of the professional chamber choir Cappella SF; the group has released three recordings on the Delos label. He recently received Chorus America’s Michael Korn Founders Award.

(September 2018)

In a career spanning more than six decades, John Williams has become one of America’s most accomplished and successful composers for film and for the concert stage. He has served as music director and laureate conductor of one of the country’s treasured musical institutions, the Boston Pops, and he maintains thriving artistic relationships with many of the world’s great orchestras, including the Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic. Mr. Williams has received a variety of awards, including the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors, the Olympic Order, and numerous Academy Awards, Grammy Awards, Emmy Awards and Golden Globe Awards. He remains one of our nation’s most distinguished and contributive musical voices.

Mr. Williams has composed the music and served as music director for more than 100 films. His nearly 50-year artistic partnership with director Steven Spielberg has resulted in many of Hollywood’s most acclaimed and successful films, including Schindler’s List, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Jaws, Jurassic Park, Close Encounters of the Third Kind,the Indiana Jones films, Saving Private Ryan, Amistad, Munich, Hook, Catch Me If You Can, Minority Report, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Empire of the Sun, The Adventures of Tintin, War Horse, The BFG, and Lincoln. Mr. Williams composed the scores for all nine Star Wars films, the first three Harry Potter films, Superman, JFK, Born on the Fourth of July, Memoirs of a Geisha, Far and Away, The Accidental Tourist, Home Alone, Nixon, The Patriot, Angela’s Ashes, Seven Years in Tibet, The Witches of Eastwick, Rosewood, Sleepers, Sabrina, Presumed Innocent, The Cowboys, The Reivers,and Goodbye, Mr. Chips,among many others. He has worked with many legendary directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, William Wyler, and Robert Altman. In 1971, he adapted the score for the film version of Fiddler on the Roof, for which he composed original violin cadenzas for Isaac Stern. He has appeared on recordings as pianist and conductor with Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Jessye Norman, and others. Mr. Williams has received five Academy Awards and 52 Oscar nominations, making him the Academy’s most-nominated living person and the second-most nominated person in the history of the Oscars. His most recent nomination was for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. He also has received seven British Academy Awards (BAFTA), 25 Grammys, four Golden Globes, five Emmys, and numerous gold and platinum records.

Born and raised in New York, Mr. Williams moved to Los Angeles with his family in 1948, where he studied composition with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. After service in the Air Force, he returned to New York to attend the Juilliard School, where he studied piano with Madame Rosina Lhevinne. While in New York, he also worked as a jazz pianist in nightclubs. He returned to Los Angeles and began his career in the film industry, working with a number of accomplished composers including Bernard Herrmann, Alfred Newman, and Franz Waxman. He went on to write music for more than 200 television films for the groundbreaking early anthology series Alcoa Theatre, Kraft Television Theatre, Chrysler Theatre, and Playhouse 90. His more recent contributions to television music include the theme for NBC Nightly News; the theme for what has become network television’s longest-running series, NBC’s Meet the Press; and a new theme for the PBS arts showcase Great Performances.

In addition to his activity in film and television, Mr. Williams has composed numerous works for the concert stage, among them two symphonies and concertos for flute, violin, clarinet, viola, oboe, and tuba. His cello concerto was commissioned by the Boston Symphony and premiered by Yo-Yo Ma at Tanglewood in 1994. Mr. Williams also has been commissioned by several of the world’s leading orchestras, including a bassoon concerto for the New York Philharmonic entitled The Five Sacred Trees, a trumpet concerto for the Cleveland Orchestra, and a horn concerto for the Chicago Symphony. Seven for Luck, a seven-piece song cycle for soprano and orchestra based on the texts of former US Poet Laureate Rita Dove, was premiered by the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood in 1998. At the opening concert of their 2009–10 season, James Levine led the Boston Symphony in the premiere Mr. Williams’s On Willows and Birches, a new concerto for harp and orchestra.

In January 1980, Mr. Williams was named 19th music director of the Boston Pops, succeeding the legendary Arthur Fiedler. He currently holds the title of Boston Pops laureate conductor, which he assumed following his retirement in December 1993, after 14 highly successful seasons. He also holds the title of artist-in-residence at Tanglewood.

One of America’s best known and most distinctive artistic voices, Mr. Williams has composed music for many important cultural and commemorative events. Liberty Fanfare was composed for the rededication of the Statue of Liberty in 1986. American Journey, written to celebrate the new millennium and to accompany the retrospective film The Unfinished Journey by Spielberg, was premiered at the America’s Millennium Concert in Washington, DC, on New Year’s Eve 1999. His orchestral work Soundings was performed at the celebratory opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. In the world of sport, he has contributed musical themes for the 1984, 1988, and 1996 Summer Olympic Games, the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, and the 1987 International Summer Games of the Special Olympics. In 2006 Mr. Williams composed the theme for NBC’s presentation of Sunday Night Football.

Mr. Williams holds honorary degrees from 22 American universities, including Harvard, Juilliard, Boston College, Northeastern University, Tufts University, Boston University, New England Conservatory, UMass Boston, Eastman School of Music, Oberlin Conservatory, and University of Southern California. He is a recipient of the 2009 National Medal of Arts, the highest award given to artists by the US Government. In 2020, Mr. Williams received Spain’s Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts, as well as the Gold Medal from the Royal Philharmonic Society in the UK. In 2016, he received the 44th Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute—the first composer in history to receive this honor. In 2003, he received the Olympic Order, the IOC’s highest honor, for his contributions to the Olympic movement. He served as the grand marshal of the 2004 Rose Parade in Pasadena and was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in December of that year. In 2018, he received the Trustees Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Mr. Williams was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009, and in January of that same year he composed and arranged Air and Simple Gifts especially for the first inaugural ceremony of President Obama. 

Feb 2023