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. 

San Francisco native Oliver Herbert’s recent solo and recital appearances include his debuts with the Chicago Symphony, Warsaw Philharmonic, Las Vegas Philharmonic, Curtis Symphony Orchestra, and the Dame Myra Hess Recital Series in Chicago, among others. Formerly a member of the SFS Youth Orchestra, he made his San Francisco Symphony debut in December 2017 in the SoundBox series. Mr. Herbert is currently under the tutelage of Carter Brey and Peter Wiley at the Curtis Institute of Music. Previously, he was a student of Clive Greensmith at the Colburn School.

Mr. Herbert has worked with conductors such as Michael Tilson Thomas, Juanjo Mena, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin and as a chamber musician, he has performed with some of the leading musicians of our time including Shmuel Ashkenasi, Franklin Cohen, Pamela Frank, Miriam Fried, Nobuko Imai, and Meng-Chieh Liu. In addition, he frequently performs as a duo with pianist Xiaohui Yang; they will embark on tours in the United States and Greece in the 2018-19 season.

Mr. Herbert is frequently invited to participate in music festivals including the Caramoor Festival, ChamberFest Cleveland, Krzyżowa Music, Music in the Vineyards, Open Chamber Music at IMS Prussia Cove, the Ravinia Festival Steans Music Institute, and the Verbier Festival Academy. In addition to being a fellow at the Ravinia Festival, he was also invited to perform on a tour with festival director Miriam Fried. At the 2017 Verbier Festival, he was awarded the Prix Jean-Nicolas Firmenich.

Mr. Herbert’s most recent awards include a top prize and special prize in the XI Witold Lutosławski International Cello Competition in 2018, first prize and the Pablo Casals Prize in the 2015 Irving M. Klein International String Competition, and a top prize in the 2015 Stulberg International String Competition.

Mr. Herbert currently plays on a 1769 Guadagnini cello that belonged to the Italian cellist Antonio Janigro, on generous loan from the Janigro family.

(September 2018)

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)

Baritone Tyler Duncan has frequently performed in his native Canada with the Toronto Symphony, Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Tafelmusik, and the National Arts Centre Orchestra, among others. In the US he has appeared as soloist with ensembles such as the New York Philharmonic; Minnesota Orchestra; the San Diego, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Seattle, Utah, and National symphonies; and the Handel and Haydn Society and San Francisco's Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. At the Metropolitan Opera he has been seen as Yamadori in Madama Butterfly and Fiorello in Il barbiere di Siviglia. Mr. Duncan recently starred in Nic Gotham's Nigredo Hotel at City Opera Vancouver and the world premiere of Jonathan Berger's Leonardo at New York's 92nd Street Y. The 2019–20 season includes debuts with the Colorado Springs Philharmonic in Britten’s War Requiem and Kansas City Symphony in Beethoven’s Mass in C major; a tour of J.S. Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion with Apollo’s Fire; engagements with Chicago's Music of the Baroque and Québec’s Les Violons du Roy; and Rameau's Dardanus in New York City and at Caramoor. Mr. Duncan’s recordings include the title role of John Blow’s Venus and Adonis, Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion with Portland Baroque, and Honegger/Ibert's L'Aiglon with the Montreal Symphony and Kent Nagano. 

(September 2019)