Kayleigh Decker’s recent and upcoming appearances include Dallas Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, Welsh National Opera, Cincinnati Opera, and Les Violons du Roy. She was named one of Caramoor’s 2018 Schwab Vocal Rising Stars and was a participant in the inau- gural season of Renée Fleming’s SongStudio at Carnegie Hall. She has given recitals at the Cincinnati Song Initiative, Pelican Hill recital series, Carnegie Hall, and the Chicago Cultural Center. She makes her San Francisco Symphony debut with these performances.

In 2019 Ms. Decker was the recipient of three prestigious scholarships: the Luminarts Fellowship, first place in the Musicians Club of Women Scholarship Competition, and a Sara Tucker Study Grant from the Richard Tucker Foundation. Further accolades include first place in the Three Arts Scholarship Fund Competition and the Macdowell Society Scholarship Award, sec- ond place in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions- Great Lakes Region, first place in the CCM Corbett Competition, and the Encouragement award in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions-Cincinnati District.

As an ensemble member of the Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago, she has appeared in Idomeneo and Madama Butterfly. She has been a young artist at Glimmerglass, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, and Utah Festival Opera, Houston Grand Opera Young Artists Vocal Academy, and Oberlin in Italy. She participated in Joyce DiDonato’s Masterclass Series at Carnegie Hall, streamed live on Medici.tv. She is an alumna of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory and the Oberlin Conservatory.

David Soar’s highlights this season include Hobson in Peter Grimes for the English National Opera, Judge Turpin in Sweeney Todd for Zürich Opera House, and Fasolt in Das Rheingold also for Zürich. Recent roles have included Capulet in a new production of Roméo et Juliette for Zürich, Colline in La bohème for Royal Opera and the Metropolitan Opera, Masetto in Don Giovanni for the Met, and Mr. Flint in Billy Budd for the Royal Opera, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, and Madrid’s Teatro Real.

In concert, Mr. Soar’s recent engagements have included the Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony, Philharmonia Orchestra with Esa-Pekka Salonen, Hallé Orchestra, BBC Symphony, BBC Scottish Symphony, Seattle Symphony, Orchestra of Opera North, and Dunedin Consort. He makes his San Francisco Symphony debut with these performances.

Recordings include The Dream of Gerontius and Roméo et Juliette with the BBC Symphony for Chandos; Stanford’s Stabat Mater with the Bournemouth Symphony for Naxos; Stravinsky’s Threni with the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, and Adriana Lecouvreur at the Royal Opera House on DVD for Opus Arte.

James McVinnie has carved out a unique career as an organist and keyboard player. Steeped in the traditions of Anglican church music, having held organ positions at St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, he has since had major concerto and solo works written for him by Nico Muhly, Gabriella Smith, Tristan Perich, Tom Jenkinson/Squarepusher, artist Martin Creed, David Chalmin, David Lang, Richard Reed Parry, Bryce Dessner, Hildur Guðnadóttir, and Darkstar, amongst many others. Alongside his work in contemporary music, Mr. McVinnie’s focus is the organ and keyboard music of J.S. Bach. He makes his San Francisco Symphony debut with these performances.

He directs the James McVinnie Ensemble, a collective of virtuoso keyboardists dedicated to exploring work, often preoccupied with political themes, by contemporary composers. The ensemble recently featured Julius Eastman’s Gay Guerrilla and Claude McKay’s 1922 poetry collection Harlem Shadows in a collaboration with the London Review of Books at London’s Bold Tendencies. New works by Gabriella Smith and inti figgis-vizueta are planned for 2024 and beyond.

Mr. McVinnie is a member of Icelandic collective and record label Bedroom Community, on which he has released three albums: Cycles, Cycles_1, and Counterpoint. He has also released The Grid, a studio album of music by Philip Glass on Orange Mountain Music, and All Night Chroma, an album of music by Tom Jenkinson/Squarepusher recorded at Royal Festival Hall and released on Warp Records.

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.