James Gaffigan serves as music director of the Komische Oper Berlin, where he began his third season in 2025–26, and he was recently named music director of Houston Grand Opera beginning in 2027. Guest engagements this season include returns to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony, Chicago Symphony, NDR Elbphilharmonie, Les Arts Valencia Opera, and Verbier Festival.

Gaffigan regularly works with the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, and Metropolitan Opera, among many others. In Europe, he has appeared with the London Symphony, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Vienna Symphony, Munich Philharmonic, Bavarian Radio Orchestra, Norwegian Opera and Ballet, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Staatskapelle Berlin, and Czech Philharmonic.

Gaffigan’s previous titles include music director of the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía in Valencia, Spain; principal guest conductor of both the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra and Opera; chief conductor of the Lucerne Symphony; and assistant conductor of the Cleveland orchestra. He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in December 2006 and served as Associate Conductor from 2006 to 2009.

Jessica Faselt’s 2025–26 season includes a house debut with the Paris Opera as Helmwige in Die Walküre and a role debut as Sieglinde in the same work with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. She also joins the Atlanta Opera in a cover assignment for the title role in Turandot and returns to the role of Sieglinde in concert performances with Taiwan’s National Symphony Orchestra. Last season she debuted with Santa Fe Opera in Die Walküre, singing the role of Helmwige and covering Sieglinde, and returned to the Metropolitan Opera as the Voice of a Falcon in Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten. She makes her San Francisco Symphony debut with these performances.

Faselt was a winner of the 2018 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. Upon performing with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in the Grand Finals Concert, Faselt was presented with the Birgit Nilsson Award of the American-Scandinavian Foundation. She went on to become a member of the Metropolitan Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program from 2018–21, and made her debut with the company in 2018 as a Novice in Puccini’s Suor Angelica. She is the recipient of the 2021 Hildegard Behrens Foundation Award, the 2020 George London Foundation Award, and a Sarah Tucker Study Grant, among other awards.

Kelley O’Connor returned this season to the Aspen Music Festival for a world premiere by Christopher Theofanidis, opened the Grand Rapids Symphony season with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and joined the New World Symphony and Fort Worth Symphony for Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs. She also appeared with the Colorado Symphony and Winston-Salem Symphony for Handel’s Messiah, sang Mahler’s Second Symphony with the Indianapolis Symphony, and returned to the Atlanta Symphony for Bernstein’s Jeremiah Symphony.

A champion of modern composers, O’Connor premiered an extended version of Thomas Adès’s America (A Prophecy) in her debut with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Andris Nelsons, and debuted with the Atlanta Symphony in Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar, resulting in a Grammy Award-winning Deutsche Grammophon recording. O’Connor’s recording catalogue includes Mahler’s Third Symphony with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Lieberson’s Neruda Songs and Michael Kurth’s Everything Lasts Forever with the Atlanta Symphony, Adams’s The Gospel According to the Other Mary with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Cleveland Orchestra. Her newest recording, Songs of Orpheus, includes a series of song cycles by Edvard Grieg, Claude Debussy, George Crumb, and Robert Spano. She made her San Francisco Symphony debut in April 2008.

Thomas Cooley has performed with the New York Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony, National Symphony, Atlanta Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Singapore Symphony, and Osaka Philharmonic. He is a leading interpreter of music by Handel and J.S. Bach, and has appeared as the Evangelist in passions with the Leipzig Thomanerchor, Windsbacher Knabenchor, Dresdner Kreuzchor, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Handel and Haydn Society, Tafelmusik, Boston Baroque, and MusicAeterna.

Cooley was a principal artist with the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich from 2002–06 and has portrayed more than 35 operatic roles with the Bavarian State Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Mark Morris Dance Group, and Göttingen International Händelfestspiele. His discography spans more than 20 recordings on labels including Deutsche Grammophon, Carus, Sony, and Avie Records, which will release his upcoming recording of St. Matthew Passion with Nicholas McGegan, a frequent collaborator, later this year.

Cooley is a visiting associate professor of music in voice and historical performance at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in February 2010.

Peixin Chen appeared this season at San Francisco Opera in the world premiere of The Monkey King and as Sparafucile in Rigoletto. A frequent guest at the Metropolitan Opera, he recently returned to the company as Timur in Turandot. Chen made his debut at the Salzburg Festival last summer, playing the General in a new Peter Sellars production of The Gambler. Other recent highlights include a debut at the Festival d’Aix en Provence in Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, a Lyric Opera of Chicago debut in Don Carlos, and a debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a fully staged presentation of Das Rheingold with Gustavo Dudamel.

Chen has appeared in numerous productions with Los Angeles Opera including Don Giovanni and Rigoletto; at Washington National Opera in Turandot, La bohème, and L’elisir d’amore; and has given performances of Das Rheingold at Seattle Opera and Dallas Opera. Appearances at the Met include performances in La bohème, Don Giovanni, Turandot, and Die Zauberflöte. A graduate of Houston Grand Opera Studio, Chen has appeared in multiple productions at Houston Grand Opera. He makes his San Francisco Symphony debut with these performances.

Jenny Wong is Chorus Director of the San Francisco Symphony, as well as the associate artistic director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Recent conducting engagements include the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella Series, Los Angeles Opera Orchestra, the Industry, Long Beach Opera, Pasadena Symphony and Pops, Phoenix Chorale, and Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles.

Under Wong’s baton, the Los Angeles Master Chorale’s performance of Frank Martin’s Mass was named for Alex Ross one of ten “Notable Performances and Recordings of 2022” in the New Yorker. In 2021 she was a national recipient of Opera America’s inaugural Opera Grants for Women Stage Directors and Conductors. She has conducted Peter Sellars’s staging of Orlando di Lasso’s Lagrime di San Pietro, Sweet Land by Du Yun and Raven Chacon, and Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Kate Soper’s Voices from the Killing Jar with the Long Beach Opera in collaboration with WildUp. She has prepared choruses for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, including for a recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 that won a 2022 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance.

A native of Hong Kong, Wong received her doctor of musical arts and master of music degrees from the University of Southern California and her undergraduate degree in voice performance from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She won two consecutive world champion titles at the World Choir Games 2010 and the International Johannes Brahms Choral Competition 2011. She recently extended her contract with the SF Symphony through the 2028–29 season.