SF Musicians for LA: A Benefit for Fire Relief
March 08, 2025
Overview
The San Francisco Symphony, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the Musicians of the San Francisco Symphony present a benefit concert to aid in the recovery from the devastating Los Angeles fires. In this special event, Edwin Outwater conducts musicians from the San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Symphony Chorus, and San Francisco Conservatory of Music Orchestra—together with pianist Garrick Ohlsson—in a program of works by Copland, Rachmaninoff, and Dvořák.Net proceeds from all ticket sales will be split evenly and donated to two vital organizations providing essential relief services:
Entertainment Community Fund
Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles: ReBUILD LA
Those who wish to further contribute to this effort may also make a donation online.
Artists
Conductor
Piano
San Francisco Symphony
San Francisco Symphony Chorus
Guest Chorus Director
SFCM Orchestra
Program
Aaron
Copland
“The Promise of Living” from The Tender Land
Sergei
Rachmaninoff
Piano Concerto No. 2
Antonín
Dvořák
Symphony No. 9, From the New World
Edwin Outwater
Conductor
Edwin Outwater regularly works with the world’s top orchestras, institutions, and artists to reinvent the concert experience. His ability to cross genres has led to collaborations with Metallica, Wynton Marsalis, Renée Fleming, and Yo-Yo Ma. He is music director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and music director laureate of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony.
Recent appearances include the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Seattle Symphony, and the New World Symphony, as well as the Royal Philharmonic. He also served as a producer and musical advisor for the National Symphony Orchestra’s 50th Anniversary Concert at the Kennedy Center. In December 2022, he premiered A Christmas Gaiety at the Royal Albert Hall with Peaches Christ and the BBC Concert Orchestra, and returned in 2023.
Outwater has held a long association with San Francisco Symphony. He was appointed Resident Conductor and Wattis Foundation Music Director of the SF Symphony Youth Orchestra by Michael Tilson Thomas in 2001 and they have been friends and colleagues since.
Recent appearances include the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Seattle Symphony, and the New World Symphony, as well as the Royal Philharmonic. He also served as a producer and musical advisor for the National Symphony Orchestra’s 50th Anniversary Concert at the Kennedy Center. In December 2022, he premiered A Christmas Gaiety at the Royal Albert Hall with Peaches Christ and the BBC Concert Orchestra, and returned in 2023.
Outwater has held a long association with San Francisco Symphony. He was appointed Resident Conductor and Wattis Foundation Music Director of the SF Symphony Youth Orchestra by Michael Tilson Thomas in 2001 and they have been friends and colleagues since.
Garrick Ohlsson
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Piano
Since his triumph as winner of the 1970 Chopin International Piano Competition, Garrick Ohlsson has established himself worldwide as a musician of magisterial interpretive and technical prowess. Although long regarded as one of the world’s leading exponents of the music of Frédéric Chopin, Ohlsson commands an enormous repertoire which ranges over the entire piano literature encompassing more than 80 concertos.
This season, Ohlsson appears with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Oregon Symphony, and Fort Worth Symphony. Collaborations with the Cleveland, Emerson, Tokyo, and Takács quartets have led to decades of touring and recordings, and his solo recordings are available on Hyperion and Bridge Records.
Ohlsson studied at the Juilliard School and was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize in 1994 and the University Musical Society (University of Michigan) Distinguished Artist Award in 1998. He was the 2014 recipient of the Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance from Northwestern University, and in August 2018, the Polish government awarded him the Gloria Artis Gold Medal for Cultural Merit. He is a Steinway Artist and lives in San Francisco, where he serves on the piano faculty of SFCM. He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in May 1972.
This season, Ohlsson appears with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Oregon Symphony, and Fort Worth Symphony. Collaborations with the Cleveland, Emerson, Tokyo, and Takács quartets have led to decades of touring and recordings, and his solo recordings are available on Hyperion and Bridge Records.
Ohlsson studied at the Juilliard School and was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize in 1994 and the University Musical Society (University of Michigan) Distinguished Artist Award in 1998. He was the 2014 recipient of the Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance from Northwestern University, and in August 2018, the Polish government awarded him the Gloria Artis Gold Medal for Cultural Merit. He is a Steinway Artist and lives in San Francisco, where he serves on the piano faculty of SFCM. He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in May 1972.
Elliot James-Ginn Encarnación
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Guest Chorus Director
Guest chorus director Elliot James-Ginn Encarnación is a composer and conductor of choral and operatic repertoire. As a self-taught tenor, he has appeared as a soloist with the San Francisco Symphony, California Bach Society, Dessoff Choirs, Long Island Symphony Choral Association, and Musica Sacra. His compositions and performances can be heard frequently in choral contexts with premier choral ensembles in New York, Santa Fe, and the Bay Area, and he has recorded for the Delos and Decca labels. He has served as artistic director for the Opera Theater Unlimited and Prodigal Opera Theatre, and as composer in residence for the International Orange Chorale in San Francisco.
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