Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s 2017-18 season highlights include return engagements with the Seattle Symphony, NHK Symphony, and BBC Symphony orchestras. He also appears at the Philharmonie de Paris with Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo and performs with the Detroit Symphony, Melbourne Symphony, Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. 

Recent performances include an appearance at the BBC Proms performing Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major with the BBC Philharmonic; Carnegie Hall, as part of a major North American tour with the London Philharmonic; as well as concerts with Zurich Opera House Orchestra under Gianandrea Noseda, HR Symphony Orchestra, and a tour with Les Siécles, which included a concert at London’s Royal Festival Hall.

In recital, Mr. Bavouzet regularly performs at venues such as The Louvre in Paris and London’s Wigmore Hall, and he has collaborated with composer Jörg Widmann in a chamber music project at the Prinzregententheater in Munich. To mark the 2018 centennial of Debussy’s death, Mr. Bavouzet performs an extended recital program of Debussy’s works, presented by the Barbican Centre at Milton Court and at the 2018 Perth International Arts Festival. Bavouzet performs an extended recital program of all Debussy’s works, presented by the Barbican Centre at Milton Court and at the 2018 Perth International Arts Festival. He also gives several recitals throughout Europe, the UK, and North America.

Mr. Bavouzet records exclusively for the Chandos label. His disc of the complete Prokofiev piano concertos with BBC Philharmonic won a 2014 Gramophone Award. Together with the Manchester Camerata, Mr. Bavouzet has recorded several of Haydn’s piano concertos and embarked on a series of Mozart concertos. Other recordings include the complete Beethoven sonatas, Bartók’s piano concertos with the BBC Philharmonic, and Stravinsky’s complete works for piano and orchestra with Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo. Mr. Bavouzet’s recording of the Ravel piano concertos with the BBC Symphony won both Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine awards, while others have garnered additional Gramophone awards and BBC Music Magazine awards, a Diapason d’Or, and Choc de l’année. He is currently recording a Haydn piano sonata cycle. 

Mr. Bavouzet has worked closely with Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, György Kurtág, Maurice Ohana, and Bruno Mantovani and is also a champion of lesser-known French music—notably that of Gabriel Pierné and Albéric Magnard. He is the International Chair in Piano at the Royal Northern College of Music. He made his SFS debut in 2012.

(April 2015)

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 Chorus Director of the San Francisco Symphony 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. 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. In 2013, he was awarded the Cultural Achievement Award from the Swedish-America Chamber of Commerce in San Francisco. He recently received Chorus America's Michael Korn Founders Award.

(April 2018)

German conductor Christian Reif joined the San Francisco Symphony as Resident Conductor and Wattis Foundation Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra in the 2016-17 season. He was previously Conducting Fellow with the New World Symphony in Miami, where he was mentored by Michael Tilson Thomas. Mr. Reif completed his master of music in conducting at the Juilliard School under Alan Gilbert, where he received the Charles Schiff Conducting Award. He also studied with Dennis Russell Davies at the Mozarteum Salzburg. Mr. Reif is currently a member of Germany's Conductor's Forum where he was named one of their “Maestros of Tomorrow.” He was Conducting Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center in 2015 and 2016 and has also worked as assistant and cover conductor for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and for the New York Phil Biennial. Mr. Reif won the German Operetta Prize 2015, awarded by the German Music Council. In the 2017-18 season, Mr. Reif makes his debut with the Orchestre National de Lyon and the Bruckner Orchestra Linz, works with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Orchestra, and makes return engagements with the Berkeley Symphony, Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, and the Lakes Area Music Festival. This summer, he makes his debut with the Indianapolis Symphony and at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York City. His enthusiasm in performing contemporary music has led to many world premiere performances, including Michael Gordon’s El Sol Caliente, a city symphony in honor of Miami Beach’s centennial; and concertos for DJ and orchestra, performed at the New World Symphony’s PULSE events. A dedicated and enthusiastic educator, Mr. Reif has also worked as a teaching fellow at the Juilliard School. He hosted and conducted education concerts with the New World Symphony, which were also webcast globally.

(April 2018)