San Francisco Symphony
The San Francisco Symphony (SFS) gave its first concerts in December 1911. Its music
directors have included Henry Hadley, Alfred Hertz, Basil Cameron, Issay Dobrowen, Pierre
Monteux, Enrique Jordá, Josef Krips, Seiji Ozawa, Edo de Waart, Herbert Blomstedt, and,
since 1995, Michael Tilson Thomas. The SFS has won such recording awards as France's Grand
Prix du Disque, Britain's Gramophone Award, and the Grammy in the US. For RCA
Red Seal, Michael Tilson Thomas and the SFS have recorded music from Prokofiev's Romeo
and Juliet, Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, two Copland collections, a
Gershwin collection, Stravinsky ballets (Le sacre du printemps, The
Firebird, and Perséphone), and Charles Ives: An American
Journey. Their recordings have won 15 Grammys, seven of those for their cycle of
Mahler symphonies, available on the Symphony's own label, SFS Media. Some of the most
important conductors of the past and recent years have been guests on the SFS podium, among
them Bruno Walter, Leopold Stokowski, Leonard Bernstein, and Sir Georg Solti, and the list
of composers who have led the orchestra includes Stravinsky, Ravel, Copland, and John
Adams. The SFS Youth Orchestra, founded in 1980, has become known around the world, as has
the SFS Chorus, heard on recordings and on the soundtracks of such films as
Amadeus and The Godfather Part III. For two decades, the SFS
Adventures in Music program has brought music to every child in grades 1-5 in San
Francisco's public schools. SFS radio broadcasts, the first in the US to feature symphonic
music when they began in 1926, today carry the orchestra's concerts across the country. In
a multimedia program designed to make classical music accessible to people of all ages and
backgrounds, the SFS has launched Keeping Score on PBS, DVD, radio, and at the
website keepingscore.org. San Francisco Symphony recordings are available at
sfsymphony.org/store, as is a history of the SFS, Music for a City, Music
for the World: 100 Years with the San Francisco Symphony.
Michael Tilson Thomas
Michael Tilson Thomas first conducted the San Francisco Symphony in 1974 and has been
music director since 1995. A Los Angeles native, he studied with John Crown and Ingolf Dahl
at the University of Southern California, becoming music director of the Young Musicians
Foundation Debut Orchestra at 19 and working with Stravinsky, Boulez, Stockhausen, and
Copland at the famed Monday Evening Concerts. He was pianist and conductor for Piatigorsky
and Heifetz master classes and, as a student of Friedelind Wagner, an assistant conductor
at Bayreuth. In 1969, Mr. Tilson Thomas won the Koussevitzky Prize and was appointed
assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Ten days later, he came to
international recognition, replacing Music Director William Steinberg in mid-concert at
Lincoln Center. He went on to become the BSO's associate conductor, then principal guest
conductor. He has also served as director of the Ojai Festival, music director of the
Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, a principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles
Philharmonic, and principal conductor of the Great Woods Festival. He became principal
conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra in 1988, and now serves as principal guest
conductor. For a decade he served as co-artistic director of Japan's Pacific Music
Festival, which he and Leonard Bernstein inaugurated in 1990, and he continues as artistic
director of the New World Symphony, which he founded in 1988. Mr. Tilson Thomas's
recordings have won numerous international awards, and his recorded repertory reflects
interests arising from work as conductor, composer, and pianist. His television credits
include the New York Philharmonic Young People's Concerts, and in 2004 he and the SFS
launched Keeping Score on PBS. His compositions include From the Diary of Anne
Frank, Shówa/Shoáh (commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima
bombing), Poems of Emily Dickinson, Urban Legend, Island Music, and
Notturno. He is a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres of France, was selected
as Gramophone's 2005 Artist of the Year, was named one of America's Best Leaders
by US News & World Report, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, and in 2010 was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack
Obama.