Michelle DeYoung has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, Vienna Philharmonic, BBC Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Bavarian State Orchestra, Berlin Staatskapelle, and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. She made her San Francisco Symphony debut in September 1995 as a Shenson Young Artist.

On the opera stage, she has appeared at the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, Seattle Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Glimmerglass Opera, La Scala, Bayreuth Festival, Berlin State Opera, Hamburg State Opera, Paris Opera, Thèâtre du Châtelet, Opéra de Nice, English National Opera, Theater Basel, and Tokyo Opera. Her many roles include the title roles in Samson et Dalila and The Rape of Lucretia; Fricka, Sieglinde, and Waltraute in Wagner’s Ring Cycle; Kundry in Parsifal; Venus in Tannhäuser; Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde; Herodias in Salome; Ježibaba in Rusalka; Eboli in Don Carlos; Amneris in Aïda; Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana; Marguerite in Le Damnation de Faust; Didon in Les Troyens; Gertrude in Hamlet; and Jocaste in Oedipus rex. She also created the role of the Shaman in Tan Dun’s The First Emperor at the Met.

A multiple Grammy Award–winning artist, Ms. DeYoung’s discography includes Kindertotenlieder, Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, and Das Klagende Lied with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony on SFS Media; Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, and Götterdämmerung with Jaap van Zweden and the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra on Naxos; Les Troyens with Sir Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra on LSO Live!; and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra on Deutsche Grammophon. Ms. DeYoung is the founder and conductor of Ensemble Charité, an organization which supports charities while fostering young, emerging musicians.

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.