Elim Chan, Music Director Designate of the San Francisco Symphony

Elim Chan

Cody Pickens, courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

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Big news from Davies Symphony Hall this morning: Elim Chan, 39, will be the next music director of the San Francisco Symphony. She joins the orchestra immediately with the title Music Director Designate, and will become Music Director with the 2027-28 season.

Chan has conducted SFS three times, most recently in a program of excerpts from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. Previously, she led works of Britten, Holst, Ogonek, Prokofiev, and more Tchaikovsky.

On June 5 and 6, she's leading this program, which I expect will be gorgeous:

• Felix Mendelssohn, Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream
  
• Hector Berlioz, Les Nuits d'été,  with Sasha Cooke, mezzo-soprano
• Richard Wagner, Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde
  
• Claude Debussy, La Mer

Get your tickets right now, because there will be a run on them any second. 

Chan will be the 13th music director of SFS, joining a lineage that includes such luminaries as Pierre Monteux, Seiji Ozawa, Edo de Waart, Herbert Blomstedt, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Her initial contract is for six years.

SFS will be by far the biggest-budget U.S. orchestra to have a woman as music director. Current female music directors elsewhere include Xian Zhang at the Seattle Symphony, JoAnn Falletta at the Buffalo Philharmonic, and Carolyn Kuan, who conducted The Monkey King at San Francisco Opera last fall, at the Hartford Symphony. Just across the street from Davies, Eun Sun Kim is the music director of San Francisco Opera.

The press release has these details:

In September 2027, Elim Chan begins her tenure as Music Director, leading the Orchestra in a minimum of 10 weeks of programming, including the Opening Gala and All San Francisco concert. From the 2028–29 season onward, she will conduct a minimum of 10 subscription weeks, as well as Opening Week, with an additional three weeks devoted to special projects such as touring and SoundBox.

A while back, Joshua Kosman wrote this in a review:

At intermission, a well-connected observer whispered unconfirmed rumors in my ear, which I unapologetically pass along, about the strong bond that’s been forming in recent years between Chan and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The Philharmonic will need a new music director by 2026, when Gustavo Dudamel pulls up stakes and decamps to lead the New York Philharmonic.

Make of that scuttlebutt what you will, if anything. But Thursday’s triumph suggested that the orchestra could do worse — and that Chan’s next appearance in San Francisco is something to look forward to with unreserved excitement. 

Let's double and redouble that, now that Chan will be the next music director of the San Francisco Symphony.

Museum Monday

Virgin and Child

School of Donatello

Raphael: Sublime Poetry

Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

April, 2026

 

Belated Friday Photo

Plaque honoring Willa Cather

5 Bank St, NYC

May, 2016

 

Now We Know

Davies Symphony Hall

Home of the San Francisco Symphony

Back in December, 2024, when SFS was threatening drastic cuts in the Symphony Chorus's budget, an anonymous benefactor made a $4 million donation in support of the chorus, which allowed the orchestra to maintain the Chorus and pay for the 32 AGMA singers in the group.

Now we know who the donor was, owing to his NY Times obituary: the mathematician and computer scientist Dr. Peter G. Neumann, who specialized in computer security. I encourage reading the obit; the link is a gift link.

 

MTT Update

Michael Tilson Thomas

Photo by Brandon Patroc, courtesy of San Francisco Symphony

My post on the occasion of MTT's death has grown by quite a bit since April 23, as I've located more obituaries and tributes to him. I think that every orchestra he conducted has posted a memorial to him; I saw tons on social media and didn't grab all of the links.

I want to note Mark Swed's Los Angeles Times article (now behind a paywall) and Tim Page's Washington Post obit (gift link has expired), which go into some detail about MTT's personality and, well, why there's a period in his life when he didn't have a music director job. He was impetuous and somewhat arrogant; Peter Pastreich's comments in my NPR obituary mention that in 1985, when SFS hired Herbert Blomstedt, MTT wasn't ready for the top job, but he was a decade later. 

 

Museum Mondays

Annunciation, by Raphael 

Raphael: Sublime Poetry

Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

April, 2026

 

Friday Photo

See at a New York City Subway Stop

Prospect Heights, Brooklyn

April, 2026

 

What I've Been Up To

Chevy Chase Rose

Mine is blooming right now.

I've had a few articles published recently besides the MTT obit.

• Silent Cinema, and Its Music, Returns to the Castro. I interviewed Anita Monga of the SF Silent Film Festival and four composers who'll be playing at the 2026 SFF. A fun article to write! The SFF started last night and I'm sure you can still get tickets to most or all of the shows.
  
• Hespèrion XXI Visits Worlds Old and New. Jordi Savall, Hespèrion XXI, La Capella Reial de Catalunya, and various guests at Cal Performances. This is the second time I've seen Savall and Hespèrion live and the second time I have been disappointed. Their records are phenomenal, and I've read glowing reviews from 20 years back, but....their recorded greatness hasn't come through in live performances.
• An Earful of E: Víkingur Ólafsson Draws Connections Between Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert. The Icelandic pianist at Cal Performances. Before you comment or email me, yes, AP style for Icelandic names is apparently to use the full name on first use, just the first name on second, owing to Icelandic patrynomic naming. Related:
• Jeff Kaliss interviews Víkingur Ólafsson, SFCV. The pianist described the naming convention to Kaliss.
• Gabe Meline interviews the pianist, KQED

 

Museum Mondays

Green glass vase

Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

November, 2013

 

Friday Photo

Buildings, Downtown San Francisco

April, 2026