Youth Orchestra
About the SFS Youth Orchestra
The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra (SFSYO) was inaugurated in the 1981-82 season, and is currently recognized throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia as one of the finest youth orchestras in the world. Founded in 1981, SFSYO program is available to select talented young musicians from the greater Bay Area. The more than one hundred diverse musicians, ranging in age from twelve to twenty-one, are chosen from more than three hundred applicants in annual auditions.
The SFSYO rehearses and performs in Davies Symphony Hall under the direction of the San Francisco Symphony's Assistant Conductor and Wattis Foundation Music Director of the Youth Orchestra, Donato Cabrera. Jahja Ling served as the SFSYO's first Music Director, followed by David Milnes, Leif Bjaland, Alasdair Neale, Edwin Outwater, and Benjamin Shwartz.
As part of the SFSYO's innovative training program, members of the SFS - known as the YO Coaching Team - work with the young players each Saturday afternoon in sectional rehearsals, followed by full orchestra rehearsals with Maestro Shwartz. SFSYO members also have the opportunity to work with many of the world-renowned artists performing with the SFS.
SFS Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, SFS Conductor Laureate Herbert Blomstedt, Edo de Waart, Kurt Masur, Valery Gergiev, Leonard Slatkin, Yo-Yo Ma, Isaac Stern, Yehudi Menuhin, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Pinchas Zukerman, Midori, Vadim Repin, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Joshua Bell, Gil Shaham, Sarah Chang, Maxim Vengerov, Emanuel Ax, Garrick Ohlsson, Joseph Silverstein, Richard Stoltzman, Paula Robison, and Mstislav Rostropovich have all worked with the SFSYO. Of equal importance, the students are able to talk with these prominent musicians, asking questions about their lives, their professional and personal experiences, and about music.
Concerts
The SFSYO presents a series of subscription concerts each season in Davies Symphony Hall, as well as seasonal and other special concerts and appearances. The subscription programs are filled with the great masterworks of the orchestral repertoire, works brought to life by the SFSYO's acclaimed virtuosity and unique sense of discovery. The ensemble is also noted for its commissioning program and performances of modern and contemporary works each season by composers such as John Adams, David Carlson, Richard Danielpour, Christopher Rouse, Charles Wuorinen, Deborah Fischer Teason, Tobias Picker, Bruce Saylor, Olly Wilson, and Nathaniel Stookey.
As part of its annual holiday Peter and the Wolf concerts, the SFSYO collaborates with a wide range of artists and local celebrities - past narrators have included actors Robin Williams, Sid Caesar, Danny Glover, Geoff Hoyle, Sharon Stone, Rita Moreno, and Florence Henderson; singers Linda Ronstadt and Bobby McFerrin; San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen; Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart and Michael Tilson Thomas. Each season, the SFSYO also presents a series of free concerts at Davies Symphony Hall especially for senior and community organizations from throughout the city.
International Tours
The SFSYO embarked on its first European tour in 1986, where it was awarded the world's highest honor for a young musician's orchestral ensemble, the City of Vienna Prize, at the Fifteenth International Youth and Music Festival. In the summer of 1989 the SFSYO made its first tour of Asia with performances in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia. During the summer of 1992, the ensemble performed in Italy, Spain, and France, including a performance at one of the world's most prestigious festivals, Aix-en-Provence.
In June-July 1995, the SFSYO visited Europe for a third time performing by invitation at some of the world's most revered concert halls. The three-week tour included concerts at Leipzig's Gewandhaus (in a concert broadcast live on German radio) and Amsterdam's renowned Concertgebouw. Press reaction throughout the tour, which also included concerts in Copenhagen, Ludwigsburg, Baden-Baden, Bad Kissingen, Vienna, and Rotterdam, consisted of unanimous rave reviews for the young musical ambassadors. The SFSYO returned once again to perform in the great concert halls of Europe on its fifth international tour during the summer of 1998, with debuts at the Cité de la Musique in Paris and the Dvořák Hall in Prague added to a return engagement at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw.
The sixth SFSYO tour took the orchestra to Russia, Lithuania and Ireland in the summer of 2001. Beginning with a concert at Moscow's Great Hall at the Conservatory of Music, the orchestra continued to perform for capacity audiences in Vilnius and Kaunas, Lithuania before traveling to St. Petersburg where the orchestra played by invitation in the historic Mariinksy Theatre as a part of the Stars of the White Nights Festival. The Ireland portion of this international tour started in Limerick and continued through Cork to Dublin. The finale of the 2001 International Tour was a performance for a sold-out audience at Dublin's National Concert Hall. This spectacular performance was broadcast live on Ireland's national radio station, Lyric FM.
The orchestra returned to Europe in summer 2004 with performances in the prestigious Musikverein, home of the Vienna Philharmonic, Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, and a third return engagement at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Additional performances as part of the Festival "Les Nuits de Fourvière" in Lyon, Festival de Saint-Riquier, the Rheingau Musik Festival in southern Germany, and a concert at Berlin’s Haus des Rundfunks rounded out the tour.
The Orchestra's most recent Tour, in the Summer of 2008, included debuts at the Berlin Philharmonie, the Munich Philharmonie, and Prague's opulent Smetana Hall.
Recordings
The SFSYO has released five CDs and has been broadcast at home and in several countries. The SFSYO was accorded a prestigious honor in the summer of 1995 when it was selected by the BBC in London to kick off the season broadcast of its "Youth Orchestras of the World" radio series. Audiences throughout Europe were treated to the SFSYO's critically acclaimed CD recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 5 (recorded live in Davies Symphony Hall in May 1994), and broadcast of the SFSYO's March 1995 Davies Symphony Hall performance of Bartók's Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin.
Other SFSYO recordings include a special two-disc commemorative set released in the 1991-92 season celebrating its tenth anniversary and featuring live concert recordings from 1982-1991. A third recording, from the SFSYO's celebrated performance at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw during the 1995 European Tour, was released in the spring of 1997 to rave reviews.
In May 1999 the SFSYO released its fourth disc, Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2, recorded live in Prague's Dvořák Hall during the SFSYO's critically acclaimed 1998 European tour. May 2001 saw the release of the orchestra's 20th Anniversary Season Commemorative CD, including works performed during the 1998 tour as well as two Richard Strauss works, Dance of the Seven Veils from Salome and Also Sprach Zarathustra, performed at the SFSYO's home of Davies Symphony Hall.
The SFSYO performed at the official inauguration ceremony for Mayor Willie L. Brown, Jr., in January 1996; the public dedication ceremony for San Francisco's New Main Library in April 1996; and the special San Francisco salute to Queen Elizabeth II in 1983. They have served three times as the orchestra for a series of conducting workshops sponsored by the American Symphony Orchestra League; they have performed special "New and Unusual Music" concerts; and they have opened the city's Stern Grove Festival in 1992, 1989, and 1986.
The SFSYO also performs many community and other free concerts each season; these have included concerts for patients at Laguna Honda Hospital, a benefit concert for Stanford's Children's Hospital, and an Earthquake Relief Concert for the Hollister School for the Arts. As part of the San Francisco Symphony’s June 1996 celebration of American music, An American Festival, the SFSYO joined Maestro Tilson Thomas, members of the Grateful Dead, and vocal soloists in an unprecedented collaboration to perform John Cage's Renga with Apartment House 1776. Members of the SFSYO percussion section were also featured in a festival performance of Henry Cowell's Ostinato Pianissimo.
In June 1997, the SFSYO performed as part of the SFS's Music For Families series. SFSYO percussion section members were once again guest soloists in the San Francisco Symphony’s June 1999 Maverick's concert, performing Russell Peck's Liftoff. On December 3, 2001 for the first time ever, the Youth Orchestra shared the concert stage with the San Francisco Symphony and SFS Chorus in a performance honoring the departing SFS Board President, Nancy Bechtle.
Learn more about past tours | Learn more about our recordings