Fabien Gabel is music director of the Tonkünstler Orchestra, leading concerts across the orchestra’s homes at the Vienna Musikverein, St. Pölten, and Grafenegg. This season, he returns to the Chicago Symphony, Danish National Symphony, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, and Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and debuts with the Sydney Symphony, Finnish Radio Symphony, and Dresden Philharmonic. In recent seasons, he has also appeared with the Cleveland Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, London Philharmonic, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Seoul Philharmonic, and Metropolitan Opera. Gabel works regularly with all major Parisian orchestras as well as the Paris Opera. He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in February 2020.

Gabel drew international attention in 2004 as the winner of the Donatella Flick conducting competition, and then served as assistant conductor of the London Symphony from 2004–06. He went on to be music director of the Orchestre Symphonique de Québec between 2012–2021 and the French National Youth Orchestra from 2017–21. Born in Paris to a family of accomplished musicians, Gabel began playing the trumpet at the age of six and honed his skills at the Paris Conservatory and at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe. He played with various Parisian orchestras before embarking on his conducting career. Gabel was named Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in January 2020.
 

This season, Isabel Leonard makes her house debut at Teatro Real in Madrid as Rosina in The Barber of Seville and sings her role debut as Julie in Show Boat with Houston Grand Opera. She is also featured as a soloist in the Metropolitan Opera’s Diamond Jubilee Gala. Orchestral highlights include opening the Houston Symphony’s season, a gala appearance with the San Diego Symphony, and performances with the St. Louis Symphony. She made her San Francisco Symphony debut in October 2013.

Leonard has extended her reach beyond classical music audiences through an active presence in film and popular culture. Her television and film credits include an appearance in the Rebecca Miller film She Came to Me and the Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro, directed by Bradley Cooper. She has also been featured on Sesame Street, in scenes from Terrence McNally’s Masterclass, and is a familiar presence as a regular host of the Met’s Live in HD broadcasts.

Leonard is a recipient of the Richard Tucker Award and earned three Grammy Awards for Michael Tilson Thomas’s From the Diary of Anne Frank, recorded with the San Francisco Symphony on SFS Media; Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges on Decca; and Thomas Adès’s The Tempest from the Metropolitan Opera on Deutsche Grammophon. She sits on the board of trustees at Carnegie Hall and on the artistic advisory board of ArtSmart. A native New Yorker, Leonard is a graduate of the Juilliard School.