Following a two-year search for a replacement for respected conductor and music director Esa-Pekka Salonen, the San Francisco Symphony has named 39-year-old Elim Chan to the role.

This marks the first time a woman has been named to lead the San Francisco Symphony in its 115-year history, as the orchestra notes in its announcement today. And Chan, who made her San  Francisco  Symphony debut during the 2022–23 season and who most recently served as Principal Conductor of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, will be only the third woman ever to lead a top-tier American orchestra, according to the SF Chronicle.

Chan takes on the role vacated by Esa-Pekka Salonen, who announced he was stepping down in March 2024. The reason for his departure appeared, at the time, likely motivated by the orchestra's tightening finances, which were constraining Salonen's ambitions and ability to commission new work.

The announcement of Chan's hiring also arrives just one month after the death of Michael Tilson-Thomas, who made a much more lasting mark on the orchestra during his 25-year tenure as music director, which ended in 2020.

Chan says in a statement that she is "honored to take the podium" of one of the "truly great orchestras of the world."

"From my very first encounter with this orchestra, I have been genuinely struck by the generosity of its musicians — exemplified in their sound, their music-making, and in their spirit," Chan says. "The Bay Area has long been the place where the future gets invented. This orchestra carries that same restless, forward-looking energy in everything it does."

And, she adds to the Chronicle, "Every time I come here, there’s such passion and care in how the orchestra plays... The musicians are quick and professional, and they’re feisty. They fight because they care about the music."

SF Symphony CEO Matthew Spivey calls Chan "a musician of unusual gifts and a leader of equal substance — a rare combination, and the one behind her remarkable international rise."

"What sets her apart on the podium is the conviction she brings to the music itself. Works orchestras have played a hundred times sound newly made under her hand, lit by a feeling for structure, color, and emotional architecture that audiences hear before they can name," Spivey adds. "Just as distinctive is the company she keeps with living composers. She does not simply program new music — she lives inside it, shaping what the canon can become by advocating for it."

Spivey also says that Chan is a fitting choice to continue "the San Francisco Symphony's lineage — an orchestra long known for its sound, its appetite for new work, and its conviction that the great repertoire is something to be tested and reanimated, not preserved under glass."

Chan, who was born in Hong Kong and educated at Smith College in Massachusetts, has reportedly been a sought-after guest conductor, recently making debuts or re-appearances with the Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, and Pittsburgh Symphony, and that's just in the US.

Most recently she was named Artistic Partner with the Vienna Symphony for the 2026–27 and 2027–28 seasons. And in addition to being Principal Conductor of the Antwerp Symphony, she served as Principal Guest Conductor of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra between 2018 and 2023.

Her appearances with the SF Symphony have been widely praised, including by Chronicle critic Joshua Kosman, who has called her "the real deal."

"Chan … projects a degree of physical authority from the podium that is rare to witness," Kosman wrote.

Writing about an all-Tchaikovsky program she conducted in March 2025, critic Michael Zwiebach wrote, "It’s clear by now that conductor Elim Chan can bring out the best in a top-rank orchestra. … Chan clearly works from a detailed conception of the score, but what the audience sees is a conductor who is as communicative as a dancer."

Tickets are now available for Chan's first concerts as Music Director Designate on June 5 and 6. She will be conducting a program including Richard Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, Hector Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été featuring mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke as soloist, and Claude Debussy’s La Mer. The June 5 concert will be followed by a post-concert reception and celebration at Davies Symphony Hall.

Chan will begin her tenure at the SF Symphony in September 2024, leading the orchestra in a program set to last at least ten weeks, including the Opening Gala and All San Francisco concert.

Her contract will have her conducting a minimum of 10 subscription weeks from 2028 onward, along with Opening Week and three weeks devoted to touring with the symphony, and SoundBox.