Sir András Schiff was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1953 and started piano lessons at age five with Elisabeth Vadász. He continued his studies at the Franz Liszt Academy with Pál Kadosa, György Kurtág, and Ferenc Rados, and later in London with George Malcolm.

Recitals and special cycles, including the major keyboard works of J.S. Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, and Bartók, form an important part of his activities. Since 2004 he has performed complete cycles of the thirty-two Beethoven sonatas worldwide; his performance of the cycle in the Tonhalle Zurich was recorded live for ECM Records. He has been a regular guest of the San Francisco Symphony since his debut in 1984.

An exclusive ECM recording artist, Mr. Schiff has released critically acclaimed recordings of works by Schubert, Schumann, Janáček, Beethoven, and Bach. His latest recording includes violin sonatas by Bach, Busoni, and Beethoven with violinist Yuuko Shiokawa. Encores after Beethoven was released in 2016. Mr. Schiff's book, Musik kommt aus der Stille, featuring essays and conversations with Martin Meyer, was published in 2017 by Bärenreiter and Henschel.    

This season, Mr. Schiff conducts and plays with the Seattle Symphony, and gives recitals at venues throughout the US, including Carnegie Hall. Additional concert performances also bring him to Europe, Australia, Asia, and South America.  

In 1999 he created his own chamber orchestra, Cappella Andrea Barca. Previously he was artistic director of the Musiktage Mondsee chamber music festival near Salzburg. He co-founded the Ittinger Pfingstkonzerte in Switzerland and is founder of Hommage to Palladio at the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza. He has been pianist-in-residence of the Berlin Philharmonic and Kunstfest Weimar and a Perspectives Artist at Carnegie Hall.

Mr. Schiff is an Honorary Member of the Beethoven House in Bonn, and he has received the Wigmore Hall Medal, the Schumann Prize awarded by the city of Zwickau, the Golden Mozart-Medaille by the International Stiftung Mozarteum, the Order pour le mérite for Sciences and Arts, the Grosse Verdienstkreuz mit Stern der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, and he was named a Member of Honour of Vienna Konzerthaus.  He has received the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Gold Medal, a Special Supernumerary Fellowship from Balliol College (Oxford, UK), and honorary degrees from Leeds University and music schools in Budapest, Detmold, and Munich. He was awarded a Knighthood by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in the 2014 Birthday Honours.

In the spring of 2011, Mr. Schiff attracted attention because of his opposition to political developments in Hungary. As a result, he has decided not to perform again in his home country. 

Bösendorfer 280VC concert grand piano provided by Yamaha Artist Services, New York.

(February 2019)

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)

Soprano Jennifer Mitchell has sung roles such as Barbarina in Le nozze di Figaro at Opera San José, the title role in Patience at Lamplighters Music Theatre (recorded and slated for release in 2019), Despina in Così fan tutte at Pocket Opera, Atalanta in Serse with the Handel Opera Project, and Annina in La Traviata at Livermore Valley Opera. Musical theater roles include Marian in The Music Man, Laurey in Oklahoma!, Johanna in Sweeney Todd, Belle in Beauty and the Beast, Cosette in Les Misérables, Julie Jordan in Carousel, Clara in The Light in the Piazza, Rosabella in The Most Happy Fella, and Polly in The Boy Friend, with companies including 42nd Street Moon, Broadway by the Bay, Cinnabar Theater, and Hillbarn Theatre. She starred as Snow White in Steve Silver’s Beach Blanket Babylon, and she has been featured as a soloist with Masterworks Chorale, most recently in Fauré’s Requiem. A Bay Area native, she is a member of the adjunct voice faculty at San José State University, in addition to maintaining a private voice studio.

(February 2019)

Mezzo-soprano Margaret “Peg” Lisi was a featured soloist in J.S. Bach’s Magnificat with the San Francisco Symphony Chorus and Voices of Music ensemble in 2018. She has performed with local and regional opera companies throughout the US in more than thirty roles, including Stéphano (Roméo et Juliette) with Florida Grand Opera, the title role of Carmen with Houston’s Orchestra X, Columbina in Busoni’s Arlecchino with the Berkeley Symphony, and multiple characters in the world premiere of Travels by Victoria Bond with Opera Roanoke. Other highlights include the title roles of Rossini’s L'Italiana in Algeri and La Cenerentola, Dido in Dido and Aeneas, Handel’s Xerxes, La Périchole, Hänsel (Hänsel und Gretel), and Dorabella (Così fan tutte), Cherubino (Le nozze di Figaro), and Nicklausse (The Tales of Hoffmann). Ms. Lisi was an apprentice with Portland Opera, Chautauqua Opera, and Florida Grand Opera where she earned the Gilbert Young Artist Award. She was a regional finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, and first place recipient of the East Bay Opera League Award.

(February 2019)