Michael Tilson Thomas is the Music Director Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony, conductor laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra, and cofounder and artistic director laureate of the New World Symphony. He is a 12-time Grammy Award winner and has conducted the major orchestras of Europe and the United States.

Born in Los Angeles, he studied conducting and composition with Ingolf Dahl at the University of Southern California and as a young musician worked with artists including Igor Stravinsky and Aaron Copland. In his mid-20s, he became assistant conductor—and later principal guest conductor—of the Boston Symphony. He subsequently served as music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and principal conductor of the London Symphony.

In 1987 he cofounded the New World Symphony, a postgraduate orchestral academy in Miami Beach dedicated to preparing young musicians of diverse backgrounds for leadership roles in classical music. He has worked with more than 1,200 NWS fellows, many of whom have gone on to major musical careers.

MTT became Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony in 1995, ushering in a period of significant growht and heightened international recognition for the orchestra. He led the Symphony in championing contemporary and American composers alongside classical masters, and as Music Director Laureate, he has returned to conduct the orchestra each season. 

His discography includes more than 120 recordings, and his television work includes series for the BBC and PBS, the New York Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concerts, and numerous televised performances. “Michael Tilson Thomas: Where Now Is” aired on PBS’s American Masters series in fall 2020.

Throughout his career, he has been an active composer, with major works including From the Diary of Anne Frank, premiered with narrator Audrey Hepburn, and Meditations on Rilke. Both appear on SFS Media’s Grammy Award-winning recording of his music. In 2023, Yuja Wang released a recording on Deutsche Grammophon which included his You Come Here Often?
He is an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France, a member of the American Academies of Arts and Sciences and Arts and Letters, a National Medal of Arts recipient, and a 2019 Kennedy Center honoree.

Three major recording projects were released in 2024 in celebration of his 80th birthday: Grace: The Music of Michael Tilson Thomas on Pentatone; The Complete Columbia, CBS, and RCA Recordings on Sony Classical; and Complete Deutsche Grammophon & Argo Recordings on DG Eloquence. 

The San Francisco Symphony Chorus was established in 1973 at the request of Seiji Ozawa, then the Symphony’s Music Director. The Chorus, numbering 32 professional and more than 120 volunteer members, now performs more than 26 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 concluded his tenure as Chorus Director in 2021, a post he had held since 2007. Jenny Wong was named Chorus Director in September 2023.

The Chorus can be heard on many acclaimed San Francisco Symphony recordings and 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 Stravinsky collection and for Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 and Symphony No. 8).

To view a San Francisco Symphony Chorus roster, click here.

The San Francisco Opera Chorus was established in 1927 by General Director Gaetano Merola who also served as the ensemble’s director through 1943. As part of General Director Kurt Adler’s development of the company, the Chorus became full-time in 1981, rehearsing a minimum of thirty-one weeks, from mid-April through early December. The current chorus consists of two groups: the forty-eight-member Regular Chorus with twenty-six men and twenty-two women, and the Extra Chorus, which can expand the ensemble to 100 singers or more in larger operas. The San Francisco Opera Chorus was the subject of the 1992 Oscar-winning feature-length documentary In the Shadow of the Stars, and has been featured in numerous video presentations, beginning in 1979 with an international live telecast of La Gioconda, and continuing with recent DVD releases of Mefistofele, Porgy and Bess, and Show Boat. The San Francisco Opera Chorus is represented by its union, the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA). Recipient of the 2012 San Francisco Opera Medal, Ian Robertson has been chorus director and conductor with San Francisco Opera since 1987, having prepared more than 300 productions for the company. He was awarded the Olivier Messiaen Foundation Prize in 2003 for his artistic contribution to the preparation of the company’s North American premiere of Saint François d’Assise. Mr. Robertson has also conducted ten main stage productions with the company. Other North American opera credits in clude productions with Sarasota Opera, Edmonton Opera, and Philadelphia’s Curtis Opera Theatre. Before joining San Francisco Opera, Mr. Robertson was head of music and chorus director of Scottish Opera. He currently serves as Artistic Director of the San Francisco Boys Chorus.

(November 2017)

Soloman Howard is a recent graduate of Washington National Opera’s Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program. His 2017-18 season features international opera house debuts on three continents: he sings Timur in Turandot for San Francisco Opera, the King in Aïda at the Teatro Real in Madrid, and Commendatore in Don Giovanni for the Teatro Municipal de Santiago, Chile. Other notable opera performances of the season include Aïda at Washington National Opera, Rigoletto at North Carolina Opera, and Madama Butterfly at Santa Fe Opera. In concert, the bass sings his first Hunding in Die Walküre at the Miami Music Festival and joins the Vienna Chamber Orchestra and Chorus of the Vienna State Opera on tour in Asia for performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. This performance marks his San Francisco Symphony debut. Last season Mr. Howard returned to the Metropolitan Opera for performances of Aïda, and he performed Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the National Symphony Orchestra and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra. The Anti-Defamation League presented Soloman Howard with their “Making a Difference Award” in summer 2016 for raising awareness of voting rights though his performances of Philip Glass’s Appomattox at the Kennedy Center and for bringing opera into the larger community. He is a graduate of the Manhattan School of Music and Morgan State University. 

(November 2017)

Canadian-American lyric coloratura soprano Nikki Einfeld has received acclaim as an interpreter of a wide range of repertory spanning from the Baroque to contemporary music. Recent highlights from the operatic stage include the title role in the world premiere of Death with Interruptions by Kurt Rhode and Curley’s Wife in Carlisle Floyd’s Of Mice and Men for Manitoba Opera. Other recent and upcoming engagements include concert appearances with Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, a New Year’s Day Gala with the Victoria Symphony, La Traviata with the Diablo Symphony, Martin y Soler’s L’Arbore di Diana at West Edge Opera, the Controller in Jonathan Dove’s Flight with Opera Parallèle, and Mozart’s Exsultate, jubilate and Requiem with the Sacramento Choral Society. Ms. Einfeld has made guest appearances on the concert stage with the Berkeley Symphony, the Marin Symphony, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra New Music Festival, Calgary Philharmonic, and the Empyrean Ensemble. A champion of contemporary music, she regularly performs premieres by modern composers and was recently appointed a member of the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble. Ms. Einfeld is a former Adler Fellow and Merola Alumna with the San Francisco Opera, and was a Grand Finalist in the 2006 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. She made her San Francisco Symphony debut in 2013.

(November 2017)

Mezzo-soprano Renée Rapier received her training as a San Francisco Opera Adler Fellow and Los Angeles Opera Domingo Thornton Young Artist before going on to make debuts with Los Angeles Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, the Ravinia Festival, and Seattle Opera. Recent appearances include the roles of Rosette in Manon and Flora Bervoix in La Traviata at San Francisco Opera, Madama Butterfly at Seattle Opera and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Jonathan Dove’s Flight with Opera Parallèle, and her debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Nixon in China. Ms. Rapier was the 2012 winner of the Palm Springs Opera Guild Competition, and the 2013 Brava! Opera Theater and James M. Collier Young Artist Program Vocal Competition. She also was a 2011 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions semifinalist, a finalist of the 2013 Seoul International Music Competition, and a semifinalist at Operalia 2015. In 2018 she will appear with Opera Parallèle in Jake Heggie’s At the Statue of Venus and Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti before making her Wagnerian debut with San Francisco Opera in Die Walküre. She made her San Francisco Symphony debut in 2015.

(November 2017)

Nicholas Phan has appeared with the Cleveland Orchestra, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, London Symphony, Los Angeles Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Glimmerglass, Seattle Opera, Glyndebourne, Deutsche Oper am Rhein, and Frankfurt Opera. An avid recitalist, he cofounded and now directs the Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago to promote art song and vocal chamber music. He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in June 2009.

Mr. Phan began the 2023–24 season with CAIC’s Collaborative Works Festival and joined Palaver Strings for A Change is Gonna Come, featuring two song cycles composed for him: Nico Muhly’s Stranger and Errollyn Wallen’s Protest Songs. He gives the West Coast premiere of Joel Puckett’s There Was A Child Went Forth with the Berkeley Symphony and the world premiere of Vivian Fung’s Songs for the Next Generation at New York’s Kaufman Music Center, where he is artist in residence for the entire season.

Mr. Phan’s most recent album, Stranger: Works for Tenor by Nico Muhly, was nominated for the 2022 Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album, and two previous albums were also nominated for the same award. Raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Mr. Phan is a graduate of the University of Michigan, also studied at the Manhattan School of Music, and is an alumnus of the Houston Grand Opera Studio. He currently serves as a coach on the faculty of the San Francisco Opera Center, where he works with Adler Fellows.