San Francisco Symphony audiences who thrilled to dramatically staged, interdisciplinary, innovative presentations when Michael Tilson Thomas and Esa-Pekka Salonen were music directors are getting some good news.
While SF Symphony is still without a music director since Salonen’s abrupt departure almost a year ago, the 2026-2027 season, announced today, shows flashes of the MTT/Salonen eras with performances combining dance, theater, and videography.
“The 2026–27 season,” says SF Symphony CEO Matthew Spivey, “brings together extraordinary artists from around the world while celebrating the creative energy of the Bay Area through collaborations, premieres, and performances that reflect the spirit of this community.”
That is despite a mixed near-term outlook. Once again, as so many times in its 114-year history, SF Symphony — along with the city — is facing societal and financial difficulties, but both are fighting their way through.
The Symphony’s last published financial figures showed revenues of $106,889,000 against expenses of $85,767,000, indicating that the organization was rebounding from the post-pandemic depression. Against those figures, forecasts paint a darker picture of “{SFS] facing a challenging fiscal year 2025 with a projected $12.5 million deficit, necessitating significant budget cuts.”
The richness of the upcoming season rests on a more positive financial outlook than the projection of a significant deficit. Also, SFS is successfully resisting the federal government’s ideological and fiscal constraints.
The arrival of Michael Gandlmayr from the Cleveland Orchestra as SF Symphony’s senior director of artistic planning is a likely factor in concert programs perking up, judging by his participation in planning Cleveland’s present and upcoming impressive Severance Hall seasons.
Not quite on the order of MTT’s many semistaged operas or what LA Philharmonic CEO Kim Noltemy called last week Salonen’s “bold and imaginative vision, especially in interdisciplinary work,” it’s good to see the following programs in Davies Hall next season:
– Choreographer Alonzo King and his LINES Ballet join SFS and conductor James Gaffigan to present two world premiere works set to Claude Debussy’s Prélude à L’Après-midi d’un faune and Aaron Copland’s suite from Appalachian Spring (Nov. 19–21).
– Janni Younge’s staged production of Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird, featuring larger-than-life puppets set to contemporary South African dance forms (June 3–5, 2027).
– Deborah O’Grady envisions John Adams’s The Dharma at Big Sur through photography and video “highlighting California’s mystical landscapes” in a concert conducted by Ryan Bancroft, the program including Gabriella Smith’s Tumblebird Contrails and Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No. 4 (June 17–18, 2027).
– Bay Area composer Smith joins the Symphony as Creative Partner “to explore ecology and the natural world through programs and special events featuring her works.”
“Since I arrived in San Francisco last September,” says Gandlmayr, “I have been struck by the city’s vibrancy and openness to new experiences, which we’ve sought to reflect in the 2026–27 programming.
“We are particularly proud to invite other Bay Area artists to collaborate in brand new projects that are emblematic of San Francisco’s rich cultural life.”
An example of such artistic collaboration is SFS partnering with Congregation Emanu-El for the performance of Ernest Bloch’s monumental Avodath Hakodesh (Sacred Service), a five-part choral-orchestral setting of Hebrew liturgy. Conducted by Teddy Abrams, the performance features Cantor Arik Luck and the SF Symphony Chorus (May 22, 2027).
Among new works on the season:
– the world premieres of SF Symphony commissions by Emerging Black Composers Project winner Kyle Rivera, conducted by Juraj Valcuha (Feb. 11–13, 2027), and a new concerto for harp and percussion by Rene Orth, conducted by Salonen (April 22–24, 2027).
– the West Coast premieres of Joe Hisaishi’s Concerto for Orchestra, an SFS commission, conducted by Hisaishi (Oct. 22–24); and John Adams’s The Rock You Stand On, conducted by Marin Alsop (Jan. 22–24, 2027).
Additional SF Symphony commissions include Gabriella Smith’s violin concerto How to Be a Bird, with soloist Alexi Kenney, conducted by Dima Slobodeniouk (March 18–20, 2027), and a new work by Reena Esmail with violinist Hilary Hahn and baritone Matthias Goerne, performed as part of the Great Performers Series (Nov. 30).
SFS also maintains its tradition of presenting prominent conductors and soloists from around the world, even as war is spreading in many places. Salonen — who is busy in Boston, Los Angeles, and elsewhere — returns on April 22–24, 2027, to conduct Orth’s Concerto for Harp and Percussion on a program that includes Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique.
Among other star soloists, just during the fall season: pianist Garrick Ohlsson (Sept. 18–19), Hilary Hahn (Sept. 24, the opening gala), soprano Renée Fleming (Oct. 1–4), pianist Ludovico Einaudi (Oct. 12), and violinist Lisa Batiashvili, cellist Gautier Capuçon, and pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet (Oct. 15), mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard (Nov. 6–8), and pianist Hélène Grimaud (Nov. 10).
Major conductors include Xian Zhang (Oct. 16–18), Rafael Payare, with violinist Leonidas Kavakos and the Montréal Symphony( Oct. 25), Elim Chan (Oct. 29–31), and the not-quite-centenarian Herbert Blomstedt (Jan. 14-16), who will conduct Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 3 and Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4, “Romantic.”
Subscription packages for the 2026–2027 season are on sale now online or by phone at 415-864-6000. Single
tickets for individual 2026–’27 concerts will go on sale Saturday, July 18
