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)

Highlights of Elizabeth DeShong’s current season include a return to Glyndebourne to sing the title role Handel’s Rinaldo, a tour with the English Concert performing Juno and Ino in Handel’s Semele and Sesto in La clemenza di Tito with the Los Angeles Opera. In addition, she appears in recital for Vocal Arts, DC at the Kennedy Center and in concerts with Music of the Baroque and the Houston Symphony. She makes debuts with the Minnesota Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic as Ariel in Sibelius’s The Tempest, and the Philadelphia Orchestra in Rossini’s Stabat Mater; these current performances mark her San Francisco Symphony debut. Last season she made her debut with the Chicago Symphony in Schubert’s Mass in E-flat major and also sang the world premiere of Three Lisel Mueller Settings by Maxwell Raimi.

Elizabeth DeShong was the recipient of Washington National Opera’s Artist of the Year award in 2010 for her performance as the Composer in Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. On DVD, she can be seen as Hermia in The Enchanted Island at the Metropolitan Opera (Virgin), and as Maffio Orsini in Lucrezia Borgia at the San Francisco Opera (EuroArts Music/Naxos). Her recording of Handel’s Messiah with the Toronto Symphony and Andrew Davis is available on the Chandos label.

(December 2018) 

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.