Arts & Entertainment SF Symphony Chorus Goes on Strike, Canceling Thursday Night’s Season Opening Performance Ticket holders to Thursday night’s SF Symphony season opening performance of Verdi’s ‘Requiem’ were wrecked to find the performance canceled barely two hours before showtime, as the symphony’s chorus is on strike because their wages have been frozen.
Arts & Entertainment SF Symphony Moves Forward With Plans For Davies Expansion, Even Though They Have Budget Problems Despite a current budget shortfall, the San Francisco Symphony is nonetheless contemplating a major redesign and expansion of Davies Symphony Hall in the coming years.
Arts & Entertainment SF Symphony Audience Member Threatened With Ban From Concert Hall for Holding Up Vulgar Sign (in Finnish) This seems to be a first: The San Francisco Symphony is threatening to ban a regular attendee who held up a profane sign at a concert, written in Finnish, to protest the impending departure of musical director Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Arts & Entertainment SF Symphony Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen Is Parting Ways With the Orchestra, Possibly Over Finances Acclaimed Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen has announced his departure from the San Francisco Symphony after the upcoming season, after a tenure that has lasted only four years.
Arts & Entertainment Rising Star Dylan Mulvaney Talks About Why She Loves SF Ahead of Her SF Symphony 'Holiday Gaiety' Performance TikTok- and Instagram-famous trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney, who became the center of an unwanted culture-war firestorm earlier this year, is performing in San Francisco tonight, and she says it's her first time ever performing with a symphony orchestra.
Arts & Entertainment The SF Conservatory of Music Has Bought Itself a Record Label Big news in the local classical music scene, as the SF Conservatory of Music has acquired Netherlands-based Pentatone Music, a label that’s won numerous Grammy Awards.
Arts & Entertainment SF Symphony Chorus Director Refuses Vaccine, Chooses to Resign Instead Grammy award-winning choral director Ragnar Bohlin would rather quit than comply with the SF Symphony’s vaccine mandate, and his Facebook posts are striking a pretty strange note.
Arts & Entertainment SF Symphony Kicks Off Season, Begins Selling Tickets For May and June Performances The San Francisco Symphony performed for a live audience on Thursday night for the first time in 14 months — a group of invited guests comprised of medical professionals and representatives of cultural districts and organizations around the region.
Arts & Entertainment Fox Theater and Bill Graham Hoping for August Shows, Symphony and Berkeley Rep Aim For September Bay Area performance venues are moving hesitantly but optimistically toward scheduling live shows later this year, after California Governor Gavin Newsom announced that checking vaccination cards will allow venues to open without capacity limits starting in mid-June.
Arts & Entertainment SF Symphony Celebrates Michael Tilson Thomas' Retirement Online, and on the Radio It was supposed to be a big June blowout celebration in honor of the acclaimed 25-year tenure of Michael Tilson Thomas as musical director of the San Francisco Symphony. But as with everything else this season, plans have been curtailed and moved online.
Arts & Entertainment SF Symphony To Play Live Score Of 'Call Me By Your Name' For Special Screening Next month, as part of their ongoing Film Series, the San Francisco Symphony will be performing the score of Call Me By Your Name, live, along with a screening of the 2017 Oscar-winning film.
Arts & Entertainment SF Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson-Thomas Announces Retirement Michael Tilson-Thomas, the music director for the SF Symphony, has just announced today that he will step down from his post after the 2019-20 season. That season will be the 25th in this
Arts & Entertainment SF Symphony Celebrates Oktoberfest With Resident Conductor Christian Reif SF Symphony Resident Conductor Christian Reif. Photo by Terrence McCarthy/SF Symphony. To coincide with the last day of Oktoberfest in Munich, the SF Symphony hosts on Tuesday its own version of the
Arts & Entertainment Exclusive: Mezzo-Soprano Isabel Leonard Discusses Leonard Bernstein Leonard Bernstein would have turned 100 next year. He and SF Symphony musical director Michael Tilson-Thomas were buddies. Lenny considered MTT his musical son. Not coincidentally, the Symphony will present a slew of
Arts & Entertainment SF Symphony Opening Night Gala Features Yo-Yo Ma, And A Rousing 'Bolero' The SF Symphony Gala kicked off the orchestra's season on Thursday night, later in September than usual as MTT was on tour with the Vienna Symphony orchestra. Often enough, classical music is a
Arts & Entertainment A Preview Of The 2017-18 Classical Music Season In The Bay Area The new classical music season kicks off this weekend with Turandot, which was the center of the opening night gala Friday at SF Opera, and continues tonight (Saturday) with Elektra. On Sunday, the
Arts & Entertainment SF Symphony Closes Out Season With Berlioz's 'Romeo and Juliet' Over last weekend, the SF Symphony ended its 2016-17 season with some fireworks: a dazzling performance of Berlioz's Romeo and Juliet. Like his Requiem, Romeo and Juliet is an odd bird, a choral
Arts & Entertainment SF Symphony Performs Monumental Berlioz Requiem Until a run this week-end, the SF Symphony had not performed Berlioz' Requiem in almost thirty years. Part of the reason is logistics: it requires an expanded orchestra and three choirs, for a
Arts & Entertainment SF Symphony Celebrates The 70th Birthday Of Berkeley-Based Composer John Adams I was listening to a radio program on what makes something popular, in between two events hosted by the SF Symphony to honor Berkeley composer John Adams' birthday. He turned 70 last week.
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews: SF Symphony's Semi-Staged 'das klagende Lied' Lotfi Mansouri, when he ran SF Opera, had persistently tried to convince MTT to conduct an opera there. It never happened. To hear MTT leading vocal works in SF, we had to settle
Arts & Entertainment SF Symphony Cancels Spring Shows In North Carolina Over Anti-LGBT Law Following in the footsteps of multiple corporations, Bruce Springsteen, and the NBA, the San Francisco Symphony is giving the middle finger to North Carolina and its pro-LGBT-discrimination law known as HB2, and canceling
Arts & Entertainment SFist Reviews Andrea Chenier, Dream of the Red Chamber and more The SF Opera seasons continues now with Don Pasquale and opening this week-end, The Makropulos Case in the same excellent production as a couple years ago. Previously, the company presented the Chinese-themed opera
Arts & Entertainment The SFist To-Do List: 12 Cool Things To Check Out This Week With Outside Lands just shy of two weeks away, some of you are likely resting up ahead of the big festival. Many more of you, however, are probably not — this is San Francisco,
Arts & Entertainment The SFist To-Do List: 12 Cool Things To Check Out This Week If nothing else, the weather this week is going to be really consistent probable fog early on, burning off later but never warming up much, with the wind threatening to knock you down
Arts & Entertainment SFist Interviews Classical Musicians Susan Graham, Celine Ricci And Ruth Felt We chat with three women in classical music with notable events this weekend. First Susan Graham, who will sing Cleopatra in a Berlioz cantata with the SF Symphony and MTT. Then Celine Ricci,
