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. 

Susanna Phillips sings this season with the Seattle Symphony, Musica Sacra, Oratorio Society of New York, and St. Louis Symphony. Her career highlights include numerous appearances at the Metropolitan Opera, where she recently made a role debut at Mimì in La bohème; leading roles with Boston Baroque; and appearances at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Cincinnati Opera, Dallas Opera, Minnesota Opera, Fort Worth Opera Festival, Boston Lyric Opera, Gran Teatro del Liceu, and Oper Frankfurt. In concert, she has collaborated with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Santa Fe Symphony, Dallas Symphony, Gulbenkian Orchestra, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and her native Huntsville Symphony. An avid chamber music collaborator, she has sung alongside Eric Owens in a program co-curated by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for Washington Performing Arts.

Phillips is a winner of the Met’s Beverly Sills Artist Award; first prize and audience prize at Operalia; and top prizes from the American Opera Society Competition, the Musicians Club of Women in Chicago, and the Marilyn Horne Foundation Competition. She made her San Francisco Symphony debut in December 2012.

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.

Bass-baritone Davóne Tines is a founding core member of the American Modern Opera Company and the recipient of the 2018 Emerging Artists Award given by Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. He is a graduate of Harvard University and the Juilliard School.

In the 2018-19 season Mr. Tines performs the world premiere of Michael Schachter’s The Black Clown—adapted from the Langston Hughes poem—with the American Repertory Theater. He sings Kaija Saariaho’s Only the Sound Remains in performances at the Teatro Real and Lincoln Center, and John Adams’s El Niño with the Berlin Radio Symphony. He reprises his portrayal of Ned Peters in the European premiere of John Adams’s Girls of the Golden West at Dutch National Opera; he created the role for his San Francisco Opera debut last season. Mr. Tines assays the title role of Henze’s El Cimarrón at the Metropolitan Museum of Arts in collaboration with the American Modern Opera Company and makes his debut at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in the world premiere of Fire Shut Up In My Bones by Terence Blanchard. He made his SFS debut in 2017 performing at SoundBox.

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)