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. 

Teddy Abrams, a Grammy Award winner and Musical America’s 2022 Conductor of the Year, has been the galvanizing force behind the Louisville Orchestra’s artistic renewal since his appointment as Music Director in September 2014.

Abrams and the Louisville Orchestra began their 2024–25 season with Carl Orff’s Carmina burana with the Louisville Chamber Choir, followed by Ray Chen performing Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto, debut works from members of the 2024–25 Creators Corps, Valerie Coleman’s Concerto for Orchestra, and a staged production of Viktor Ullmann’s chamber opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis. In demand as a guest conductor, he makes his debut this season with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He made his San Francisco Symphony conducting debut in 2012.

In April 2023, Abrams premiered his own composition Mammoth with the Louisville Orchestra and Yo-Yo Ma in Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave, and in 2024 his piano concerto for Yuja Wang won a Grammy Award.

Abrams first came to the attention of Michael Tilson Thomas when he wrote him a letter at age nine. MTT became a mentor, and they have been working together ever since. Abrams was a conducting fellow at the New World Symphony and he has also been a champion of MTT’s compositions.

Known familiarly as “Flicka,” the mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade has enriched the world of classical music for four and a half decades. Although she retired from full-time performances in 2010, she continues to make special appearances in concert and opera.

Von Stade’s career has taken her to the stages of the world’s great opera houses and concert halls. She began at the top, when she received a contract from Rudolf Bing during the Metropolitan Opera auditions, and following her debut in 1970 sang nearly all of her great roles with that company. In addition, she has appeared with every leading American opera company, including San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Los Angeles Opera. Her career in Europe was no less spectacular, with new productions mounted for her at La Scala, Royal Opera Covent Garden, the Vienna State Opera, and the Paris Opera. She has sung with the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, and made her San Francisco Symphony debut in May 1975. She and Michael Tilson Thomas have been performing together since the 1970s when they both burst onto the New York scene.

Von Stade has enjoyed close collaborations with several contemporary composers, including Jake Heggie, Ricky Ian Gordon, and Dominick Argento, among others. She holds honorary doctorates from Yale University, Boston University, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (which holds a Frederica von Stade Distinguished Chair in Voice), the Georgetown University School of Medicine, and her alma mater, the Mannes School of Music. Von Stade was honored by President Reagan for her significant contributions to the arts and in 1998 she was appointed as an officer in France’s L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Jessica Vosk is a celebrated singer and actress known for electrifying roles on musical theater and concert stages. She made her Carnegie Hall debut in November 2021 in a sold-out solo show titled My Golden Age and returned in 2022 to headline Get Happy: A Judy Garland Centennial Celebration. Her 2024–25 season include creating the fan-favorite role of Lute in the animated musical series Hazbin Hotel, creating the role of Cee Cee in the international premiere of the musical adaptation of Beaches, as well as returning to the Muny as Jenna in Waitress. Recently she debuted at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center with No Name Pops and her program California Dreamin’—Songs of the Laurel Canyon, and celebrated the holidays with the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center and the New York Pops in her return to Carnegie Hall.

Best known for her star turn as Elphaba in Wicked, Vosk’s theatrical highlights also include Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Chess, and Sarah Silverman’s The Bedwetter. She had an unconventional journey to Broadway, beginning her career on Wall Street before taking the leap of faith to pursue her dreams on stage. After a hiatus from performing, she was cast by MTT in the San Francisco Symphony production of West Side Story in June 2013. Her one-of-a-kind story has been profiled on ABC’s 20/20 and NBC Nightly News.

Ben Jones is an award-winning singer, comedian, storyteller, and actor who has shared the spotlight with Rita Moreno, Michael Tilson Thomas, Frederica von Stade, Nathan Gunn, Isabel Leonard, Helmuth Rilling, Michael Morgan, Val Diamond, and the Bang on a Can All-Stars. His versatile voice has been featured on recordings on the Albany, Naxos, and Delos labels, A Prairie Home Companion, the soundtracks for the best-selling video game franchises Halo and Civilization, and on commercials for Coors Light and Meow Mix.

Jones made his Carnegie Hall debut virtually in 2021, performing a selection from Greg Pliska and Charles Moorey’s new musical A Most Dangerous Man in Carnegie Hall’s Voices of Hope festival. He was recently seen in Off-Broadway productions of Twist of Fate and Brooklyn’s Bridge at the York Theatre. He received the Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for Best Performance in a Musical for his portrayal of Sid Sorokin in The Pajama Game. Two of his solo shows—I Think I’m in Love and I Think We Should See Other People—were featured in Broadway World’s Best of 2022 list. He made his debut with MTT and the San Francisco Symphony in September 2017 singing Chichester Psalms, and later appeared in MTT-led productions of Candide and Boris Godunov.

John Wilson frequently performs as a pianist with the San Francisco Symphony and serves as principal keyboard for the Marin Symphony, San Diego Symphony, and Oakland Symphony. This season he appears at Carnegie Hall, at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and on the SF Symphony’s Chamber Music Series. He performs Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy with the Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra and Grieg’s Piano Concerto with the Marin Symphony. A passionate advocate for contemporary music, Wilson has premiered works by Michael Tilson Thomas, John Adams, Timo Andres, and Steve Reich.

Wilson performed on the Grammy Award–winning recording of Michael Tilson Thomas’s Meditations on Rilke as well as on the recent release of Grace: The Music of Michael Tilson Thomas on Pentatone. His 2022 solo debut album on Avie Records featured the world premiere of MTT’s Upon Further Reflection.

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.