The acclaimed conductor, composer, and pianist was a leading figure in classical music, known for championing the art form through performance, education, and broadcasting.

Music Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas is joined by soprano Angel Blue, mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford, tenor Ben Bliss, and bass Dashon Burton with the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus to perform Beethoven’s dramatic Symphony No. 9, which celebrates the bonds of humanity and the glory of the creator in its triumphant “Ode to Joy.”

In Variations on a Theme of Joseph Haydn, Brahms travels in time, using ancient musical forms to explore possible futures. In Beethoven’s Second Symphony, anarchic glee subverts Classical elegance. Between the two big Bs, precisely in the present, Esa-Pekka Salonen debuts his longtime friend Anders Hillborg’s witty and colorful new Piano Concerto, performed with genial sophistication by soloist Emanuel Ax.

Season Premiere: Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, soloist Pekka Kuusisto, and composer/developer Jesper Nordin’s cutting-edge electronics come together in Nordin’s radical reinvention of the violin concerto, Convergence. In Naïve and Sentimental Music, dedicated to Salonen, John Adams celebrates a similar creative impulse: spontaneity, the spirit of free play.

Thomas is conducting the New World Symphony in late March and April, then the San Francisco Symphony on April 26 in a belated 80th birthday celebration.

Sunday, February 2, 2025, is the year’s biggest night for music. Peruse the classical, jazz, contemporary, folk, screen, and stage nominees, and see the winners as they’re announced!

Dive in to the classical, jazz, contemporary, folk, screen, and stage nominees!

Season Finale: Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen leads the San Francisco Symphony in Beethoven’s expansive Symphony No. 3, Eroica, while pianist Igor Levit plays the composer’s Emperor Concerto.

Conductor Philippe Jordan and the San Francisco Symphony join forces in Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, a tremendous work embodying the composer’s deep pacifist beliefs.

Conductor Cristian Măcelaru leads the San Francisco Symphony in Dmitri Shostakovich’s madcap First Symphony and Wynton Marsalis’ celebration of Black history and folklore, Blues Symphony. San Francisco Symphony English horn player Russ de Luna stars in Outi Tarkiainen’s Milky Ways.

Music Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas leads the San Francisco Symphony in Gustav Mahler’s monumental Sixth Symphony.

Spellbinding pianist Yuja Wang returns to the San Francisco Symphony to take on Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto. Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts this program, which also includes Gabriella Smith’s Tumblebird Contrails and Salonen’s mysterious tone poem Nyx.

Opening this program led by Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen, pianist Conor Hanick premieres a San Francisco Symphony commission by Samuel Adams. Then, Anton Bruckner’s Sixth Symphony, full of imaginative twists and turns.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard joins Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony for Bela Bartók’s zany Second Piano Concerto, in a program also featuring Sergei Prokofiev’s vibrant Romeo and Juliet and Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin.

Elim Chan’s San Francisco Symphony debut.

An ominous, atmospheric lineup of music conducted by music director Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony journey through Hector Berlioz’s phantasmic Symphonie fantastique, Franz Liszt’s devilish Totentanz with pianist Bertrand Chamayou, and Modest Mussorgsky’s supernatural Night on Bald Mountain.

Plus Nielsen’s sun-drenched Helios Overture and Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra.

Igor Stravinsky’s explosive ballet score, The Firebird, along with Jean Sibelius’s cosmic Luonnotar with soprano Golda Schultz, and the United States premiere of Daniel Kidane’s SF Symphony commission, Sun Poem.

Season Premiere: Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the SF Symphony in Gustav Mahler’s glorious Symphony No. 2 with vocalists Golda Schultz and Michelle DeYoung and the world premiere of Push by Trevor Weston.

“I do not share the same goals for the future of the institution as the board of governors does,” Salonen said in a statement.

Follow live on Sunday, February 4, as music’s biggest awards are given out!

Peruse the hopefuls for classical, jazz, soundtrack, and more!

Wanderers, farewells, and sightseeing; people are always on the go. This week, Bill calls up, “A Little Traveling Music, Please” from the pens of Handel, Smetana, Duke Ellington, and more. Reflections from such travels infuse themselves into their works, as we will discover throughout the week. We will hear selections from Beethoven’s Les Adieux, Schubert’s Die Schöne Mullerin, and Haydn’s …

Vikingur Ólafsson plays John Adams’ Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? under the baton of music director Esa-Pekka Salonen.