Press Room

Jan 11, 2020

Join the Season Playlist only on Apple Music; Individual recordings available on all major digital streaming and download stores

SAN FRANCISCO – Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) and the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) announce the launch of SFS Media’s new Digital Concert Series on Apple Music and all major streaming and download platforms on January 10, 2020. In celebration of MTT’s 25th and final season as Music Director, the series will include live concert recordings from 2019–20 season concerts featuring composers that MTT and the SFS have championed throughout their decades together. This major new addition to the SFS Media catalog launches with the initial release of five San Francisco Symphony performances conducted by MTT and recorded in 96/24-bit quality in September 2019: Mahler’s Symphony No. 6; Stravinsky’s Canticum sacrum with tenor Nicholas Phan, baritone Tyler Duncan, and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus; Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms with the San Francisco Symphony Chorus; Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 2 with Oliver Herbert; and Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements.

Throughout the season, the Digital Concert Series will grow to include additional 2019–20 recordings—each released approximately one month after performances—including Berlioz’s Overture to Benvenuto Cellini; Ravel’s La Valse; Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll; Stravinsky’s The Firebird; Sibelius’ Symphony No. 5; Ruggles’ Angels and Sun-treader; Schubert’s Symphony in B minor, “Unfinished”; Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra; Corigliano’s Three Hallucinations; and Shostakovich’s Symphony  No. 5, among others.

The San Francisco Symphony is also launching an ongoing season playlist named “Join the Season” that will be available exclusively on Apple Music. The playlist will allow global audiences to participate in the ongoing celebration of MTT’s final season as Music Director throughout the 2019-20 Season. Users with Apple Music subscriptions can add the playlist to their library which will automatically add every new work to their Apple Music library. All recordings in the playlist are available as Apple Digital Masters, which optimize native 24-bit files for streaming.

SFS Media is the San Francisco Symphony’s award-winning in-house media label, launched in 2001. SFS Media releases reflect MTT and the SFS’s artistic vision of showcasing music by American composers as well as core classical masterworks and embody the broad range of programming that has been a hallmark of the MTT/SFS partnership. Recorded live in concert and engineered at Davies Symphony Hall, the audio recordings have been released on hybrid SACD and in high-resolution digital formats. SFS Media has garnered eight Grammy awards. SFS Media also produces and releases documentary and live performance videos, including the SFS’s national public television series and multimedia project Keeping Score, which included three seasons of television episodes, eight documentaries, and eight concert films designed to make classical music more accessible to people of all ages and musical backgrounds. The Keeping Score series is available as a digital download and on DVD and Blu-ray. Other videos of the San Francisco Symphony available from SFS Media include A Celebration of Leonard Bernstein: Opening Night at Carnegie Hall 2008 and San Francisco Symphony at 100, a documentary about the Symphony’s storied history, which won a Northern California Emmy Award.

SFS Media recordings are available through digital and physical outlets worldwide including iTunes, Amazon, Apple Music, Spotify, Primephonic, HD Tracks and IDAGIO. All SFS Media physical recordings are also available from the Symphony Store in Davies Symphony Hall, as well as from all major retailers. Global distribution of all SFS Media products is managed by Warner Classics Label Services.