For a small town far from both Europe and Asia, San Francisco has a remarkable history of maintaining major symphony, opera, and ballet companies, and staffing all three with world-famous artists.
In the New World city that’s officially only 175 years old (incorporated in 1850) and was devastated in the 1906 earthquake, SF Symphony has been persevering since 1911, SF Opera since 1923, and SF Ballet since 1942. (It began as SF Opera Ballet in 1933.)
Back at the birth of the SF Symphony, the city’s population was 417,000, about one tenth of the 1910 figure for New York City, where an orchestra — with much easier access to Europe before the advent of commercial flights — had been established seven decades before.
Four years ago, true to continued interest in our cultural history, SF Classical Voice surveyed the remarkable status of the four surviving SF Symphony music directors: Seiji Ozawa, who led the orchestra from 1970 to 1976, Edo de Waart (1977–1985), Herbert Blomstedt (1985–1995), and Michael Tilson Thomas (1995–2020).
Now, with the death of Ozawa, and the arrival (and departure) of Esa-Pekka Salonen, the list looks like this in 2025, a year in which the orchestra is without a music director:
Edo de Waart, 84 years old;
Herbert Blomstedt, 98;
Michael Tilson Thomas, 79;
Esa-Pekka Salonen, 67 (music director, 2020–2025)
And, in chronological order, here is where they are now:
Among the many posts De Waart has held throughout his career were as chief conductor and artistic adviser of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra (1993–2003), artistic director and chief conductor of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra (2004–2012), and chief conductor of Santa Fe Opera (2007–2009).
In the U.S., de Waart also served as music director of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra from 2009 through 2017 (he remains conductor laureate), and artistic partner of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (2010–2014).
Never leaving his native Netherlands for long, the man whose career started as an oboist in the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, served as principal conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra from 1989 to 2004, and chief conductor of the Royal Flemish Philharmonic (2012–2016).
Adding to his amazing frequent-flyer mileage, de Waart served as music director of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra from 2016 through 2020 and principal guest conductor of the San Diego Symphony from 2019 until his retirement from conducting in 2024.
He now lives with his sixth wife, Rebecca Dopp, in Maple Bluff, Wisconsin, near Dopp's hometown of Middleton.
The unique career of Herbert Blomstedt, the oldest major symphony conductor in history, continues unabated as he signs contracts for concerts in 2027 — the centennial of his birth in Springfield, Mass., to Swedish Seventh-day Adventist parents.
After illness and accidents in recent years, Blomstedt returned to the podium in a big way, conducting numerous concerts in Europe, Asia, and in San Francisco. His only concern: “inactivity.”
Conductor laureate of the SF Symphony and honorary conductor of the Bamberg Symphony, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, NHK Symphony, Swedish Radio Symphony, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and Staatskapelle Dresden, Blomstedt keeps rounding the globe, including an acclaimed Mahler concert, in late 2024 in London.
Next month, Blomstedt is scheduled to conduct Anton Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony in Copenhagen, Oslo, and Leipzig. In early October, he will travel to Japan, to conduct concerts in Tokyo’s Suntory Hall of works by Edvard Grieg, Carl Nielsen, and Jean Sibelius.
If Blomstedt is a fearless conqueror of age, Michael Tilson Thomas wears the title of defier of medical predictions. Music director of the SF Symphony for a quarter century, he not only survives but thrives.
Since his heart surgery in 2019, and diagnosis of glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive form of brain cancer in 2021 — giving him a likely survival rate of just months — MTT continued conducting and heading the New World Symphony. An attempt the following year to curtail activities didn’t quite pan out — he continued working.
Over the past four years of living with brain cancer, MTT conducted acclaimed performances in London, at the season-opening concert of the New York Philharmonic, and elsewhere, until he finally retired from conducting at a special event with the SF Symphony this past April.
Even after his retirement, MTT attended the 2025 season-concluding concerts in San Francisco of Mahler’s Second Symphony and the Verdi Requiem.
Without any break after leaving the SF Symphony in June, Esa-Pekka Salonen answered the worldwide demand for his services as conductor and composer.
Currently, he is leading the Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival, and then he’s scheduled to go on to Lucerne, Berlin, and Hamburg on tour with the Orchestre de Paris. On September 7, Salonen conducts the Swedish Radio Symphony at the Baltic Sea Festival.
October will find Salonen with the New York Philharmonic to lead six concerts, followed by three with the Philadelphia Orchestra, where he will conduct works by Claude Debussy, Bruckner, Igor Stravinsky, and Pierre Boulez.
Meanwhile, Salonen’s compositions are getting performances — those include his horn concerto, which SF Symphony was to premiere on a tour that was canceled by management.