With a proud history of 32 Grammy nominations and 17 wins, San Francisco Symphony is again at play according to the 2026 nominations that were announced last week.
Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted his final concert as music director of the SF Symphony five months ago, but his recording with the orchestra of Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony In Three Movements was nominated in the category of Best Orchestral Performance.
It’s an illustrious category. Salonen and SF Symphony are in the running with Michael Repper and the National Philharmonic, Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony, Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Besides the SF Symphony news, there are two nominations of local significance in the Best Opera Recording category: San Francisco composer Jake Heggie’s Intelligence (which had its world premiere at the Houston Grand Opera) and the American Composers Orchestra’s world premiere of the composer Huang Ruo and librettist David Henry Hwang’s An American Soldier. The duo also wrote The Monkey King, which will receive its world premiere at SF Opera beginning Nov. 14.
The 2026 Grammy awards will take place on Feb. 1, 2026, in the Los Angeles Crypto.com Arena. For the 2025 Grammy awards, Salonen and the SF Symphony orchestra were nominated three times: one for Stravinsky’s Firebird and two for the world premiere recording of Kaija Saariaho’s Adriana Mater, which won for Best Opera Recording.
Salonen’s predecessor at SF Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas, won 11 Grammy awards with the orchestra, six of them for recordings of Gustav Mahler’s works.
Before we “go classical,” here are the Big Three categories on top of the Grammy nomination list:
Record of the Year — Bad Bunny, DtMF; Sabrina Carpenter, Manchild; Doechii, Anxiety; Billie Eilish, WILDFLOWER; Lady Gaga, Abracadabra; Kendrick Lamar with SZA, luther; Chappell Roan, The Subway; ROSÉ and Bruno Mars, APT.
Album of the Year — Bad Bunny, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS; Justin Bieber, SWAG; Sabrina Carpenter, Man's Best Friend; Clipse and Pusha T & Malice, Let God Sort Em Out; Lady Gaga, MAYHEM; Kendrick Lamar, GNX; Leon Thomas, MUTT; Tyler The Creator, CHROMAKOPIA
Song of the Year — Abracadabra; APT.; DtMF; Golden [From KPop Demon Hunters]; luther; Manchild; WILDFLOWER
Nominations in classical categories include:
Best Engineered Album, Classical — Sandbox Percussion, Cerrone: Don’t Look Down; Franz Welser-Möst, The Cleveland Orchestra, Eastman: Symphony No. 2 and Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 2; Andris Nelsons, Boston Symphony, Shostakovich: Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District; Third Coast Percussion, Standard Stoppages; Trio Mediæval, Yule
Producer of the Year, Classical — Blanton Alspaugh, Sergei Kvitko, Morten Lindberg, Dmitriy Lipay, Elaine Martone
Best Instrumental Composition — Remy Le Boeuf, First Snow; Miho Hazama, Live Life This Day: Movement; Sierra Hull, Lord, That’s a Long Way; John Powell & Stephen Schwartz, Train to Emerald City; Ludwig Göransson, Why You Here / Before the Sun Went Down
Best Opera Recording — Jake Heggie: Intelligence (Kamé Ryan, Houston Grand Opera); Huang Ruo: An American Soldier (Carolyn Kuan, American Composers Orchestra0); Mary Kouyoumdjian: Adoration (Silvana Quartet); Emma O’Halloran: Trade & Mary Motorhead (Elaine Kelly, Irish National Opera Orchestra); Jeanine Tesori: Grounded (Yannick Nézet-Séguin, The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra)
Best Contemporary Classical Composition — Christopher Cerrone, Don’t Look Down; Donnacha Dennehy, Land of Winter; Tania León, Raíces; Shawn E. Okpebholo, Songs in Flight; Gabriela Ortiz, Dzonot
