MTT 80th Birthday Concert

In This Program

• MTT Through the Years
• Michael Tilson Thomas
• From MTT
• The Concert
• Program Notes
• About the Artists
• About San Francisco Symphony

Note: Click or tap on any image to view gallery photos individually.

Michael Tilson Thomas

Michael Tilson Thomas is the Music Director Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony, conductor laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra, and cofounder and artistic director laureate of the New World Symphony. He is a 12-time Grammy Award winner and has conducted the major orchestras of Europe and the United States.

Born in Los Angeles, he studied conducting and composition with Ingolf Dahl at the University of Southern California and as a young musician worked with artists including Igor Stravinsky and Aaron Copland. In his mid-20s, he became assistant conductor—and later principal guest conductor—of the Boston Symphony. He subsequently served as music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, principal guest conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and principal conductor of the London Symphony.

In 1987 he cofounded the New World Symphony, a postgraduate orchestral academy in Miami Beach dedicated to preparing young musicians of diverse backgrounds for leadership roles in classical music. He has worked with more than 1,200 NWS fellows, many of whom have gone on to major musical careers.

MTT became Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony in 1995, ushering in a period of significant growth and heightened international recognition for the orchestra. He led the Symphony in championing contemporary and American composers alongside classical masters, and as Music Director Laureate, he has returned to conduct the orchestra each season.

His discography includes more than 120 recordings, and his television work includes series for the BBC and PBS, the New York Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concerts, and numerous televised performances. “Michael Tilson Thomas: Where Now Is” aired on PBS’s American Masters series in fall 2020.

Throughout his career, he has been an active composer, with major works including From the Diary of Anne Frank, premiered with narrator Audrey Hepburn, and Meditations on Rilke. Both appear on SFS Media’s Grammy Award-winning recording of his music. In 2023, Yuja Wang released a recording on Deutsche Grammophon which included his You Come Here Often?

He is an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France, a member of the American Academies of Arts and Sciences and Arts and Letters, a National Medal of Arts recipient, and a 2019 Kennedy Center honoree.

Three major recording projects were released in 2024 in celebration of his 80th birthday: Grace: The Music of Michael Tilson Thomas on Pentatone; The Complete Columbia, CBS, and RCA Recordings on Sony Classical; and Complete Deutsche Grammophon & Argo Recordings on DG Eloquence.

I was 12 years old when I first visited San Francisco on the Daylight Streamliner train from Los Angeles. This was the time of Hitchcock’s Vertigo. So many of the images of that film were part of everyday life in the city. There was Ernie’s Restaurant, Jack’s, the Cliff House, Sutro Baths, the Palace of Fine Arts, foghorns, white-gloved ladies shopping at the White House, Magnin’s, and Gump’s. Herb Caen’s columns were sent to us down to the “city in the south” to be read with great delight.

For years it was my life dream to come to San Francisco and to work with this orchestra. When I first conducted here in 1974 we played Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in the Opera House. I became aware of the enormous “put it over the footlights” style the orchestra had developed because of the nature of the acoustic in which it was playing. I found the orchestra was willing to take risks in a thrilling way that made the music vivid. I appreciated their spirit of adventure and we connected on a profound musical level even before I became Music Director in 1995. Our collaborative launch at that moment was a powerful statement to the world.

The San Francisco Symphony is a collection of musicians who truly reflect the city in which they reside. We are so fortunate that there are music lovers in this city who are willing to listen to the music we choose to present—whether it’s Mahler, Beethoven, Stravinsky, or Cage. I feel very fortunate to be a part of this community of adventurers and I feed off its spirit and energy. The future resides in the hearts and souls of the people who are listening to our music. We must continually work to make a place where all feel they are welcome.

The arts are part of the testimony of keeping great ideals alive. I’m grateful to San Francisco for being so welcoming and generous to me and Joshua for all these years. It has allowed me to become myself in the fullest sense, both artistically and personally. Thank you for sharing my life.

Michael Tilson Thomas

Saturday, April 26, 2025, at 7:30pm

Michael Tilson Thomas conductor
Teddy Abrams conductor
Edwin Outwater conductor

Benjamin Britten

Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell, Opus 34 (1943)

Joseph Rumshinsky
(arr. MTT)

Overture from Khantshe in Amerike (1912)

Songs for MTT

Michael Tilson Thomas

Immer wieder from Meditations on Rilke (2019)
Sasha Cooke mezzo-soprano

Michael Tilson Thomas
(orch. Bruce Coughlin)

Not Everyone Thinks That I’m Beautiful (1985) 
Frederica von Stade mezzo-soprano
Sasha Cooke mezzo-soprano

Claude Debussy

La flûte de Pan from Chansons de Bilitis (1897)
Frederica von Stade mezzo-soprano
John Wilson piano

Michael Tilson Thomas
(orch. MTT/Bruce Coughlin)

Drift Off to Sleep (1982)
Answered Prayers (ca. 1974)
Ben Jones tenor

Frank Loesser

Take Back Your Mink from Guys and Dolls (1950)
Jessica Vosk
Members of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus
Jenny Wong director

Michael Tilson Thomas
(orch. MTT/Larry Moore)

Sentimental Again (1985)
Jessica Vosk

Intermission

Michael Tilson Thomas

Grace (1988)
Sasha Cooke mezzo-soprano
John Wilson piano

Leonard Bernstein

Finale from Chichester Psalms (1965)
San Francisco Symphony Chorus
Jenny Wong director

Ottorino Respighi

Roman Festivals (1928)
Games at the Circus Maximus
The Jubilee
The October Festival
The Epiphany

Lead support for the San Francisco Symphony Chorus this season is provided through a visionary gift from an anonymous donor.

This concert is supported in part by Maria Manetti Shrem.

Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell, Opus 34

Benjamin Britten

Born: November 22, 1913, in Lowestoft, England
Died: December 4, 1974, in Aldeburgh, England
Work Composed: 1946

Benjamin Britten wrote this music for a documentary film, Instruments of the Orchestra, produced in 1946. Also titled The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, it can be done with or without its explanatory text. Joyous and clever thing that it is, the work is very much worth playing for its sheer musical pleasure.

Britten chose a theme by the composer he loved and knew best among his English predecessors. The swaggering tune comes from Henry Purcell’s music for a revival in 1695 of Abdelazer, or the Moor’s Revenge, a tragedy by Aphra Behn. Britten plays the theme first with full orchestra, introduces the orchestral families one at a time (woodwind, brass, strings, percussion), then gives it to us for full orchestra once more. Then the variations proper begin, each family broken down into its component parts. Now that the orchestra has been taken to pieces it wants to be put together again. Britten does this through a fugue, a musical form in which themes are introduced one after the other by various instrumental voices and then combined, all the voices sounding their parts together. Britten starts a high-speed fugue in which he reintroduces the instruments in the order in which we heard them before. To cap it, Purcell’s original tune rides in majestic brass chords across the busy scurry of Britten’s fugue.

—Michael Steinberg

Overture from Khantshe in Amerike

Joseph Rumshinsky

Born: 1881, in Vilna, Lithuania
Died: February 5, 1956, in New York
Work Composed: 1912

Joseph Rumshinsky was one of the most important composers of American Yiddish theater in the early 20th century. He immigrated to America in 1904 and was invited to New York by Boris Thomashefsky, the grandfather of Michael Tilson Thomas, who was an extremely famous actor and impresario within the scene. Rumshinsky pushed Yiddish theater beyond its vaudeville-style roots towards fully fledged operetta.

Khantshe in Amerike is a four-act comedy with a book by Nahum Rakow, music by Rushinsky, and lyrics by Isidore Lillian. It premiered in 1915, with Bessie Thomashefsky (MTT’s grandmother) in the title role. Jane Peppler, who writes at the Yiddish Curiosities blog (www.polishjewishcabaret.com), describes the character as “a modern girl, a pickpocket and a champion for women’s rights.” MTT included the overture in The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater, his production that premiered at Carnegie Hall in 2005 and was filmed with the New World Symphony in 2011.

—Benjamin Pesetsky

Songs for MTT

Immer wieder
Michael Tilson Thomas

Born: December 21, 1944, in Los Angeles
Work Composed: 2019

“For my father, grandfather, and even great-grandfather, music was a lifelong journal, a confessional companion, into which new entries were always being added. It is much the same for me, and in composing these Meditations on Rilke, whose poems are so varied in mood and character, my own lifelong ‘musical journal’ was a lens through which to view and express this poetry. My wish is that all people would have this kind of relationship to music—music spontaneously popping into their minds—perhaps in recollection and perhaps in anticipation of places within their spirits. ‘Immer wieder’ is like a Schubert cowboy song. My father often pointed out the similarity between songs like ‘Red River Valley’ to many of Schubert’s songs.” 

—MTT

Immer wieder
Immer wieder, ob wir der Liebe Landschaft auch kennen
und den kleinen Kirchhof mit seinen klagenden Namen
und die furchtbar verschweigende Schlucht, in welcher die anderen
enden: immer wieder gehn wir zu zweien hinaus
unter die alten Bäume, lagern uns immer wieder
zwischen die Blumen, gegenüber dem Himmel.

—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926)

Again, again
Again, again, though we know the land of love
and the little churchyard with its mourning names,
and the terrible, silent ravine into which the others
dropped: again, again we go out, just we two,
beneath the old trees, time and again we lie down
amid the flowers, facing the sky.

Not Everyone Thinks That I’m Beautiful
Michael Tilson Thomas

Work Composed: 1985

“While living in a loft in New York in the 1980s, I wrote some songs with no one particular in mind. I was so pleased when, in a series of recitals beginning in 1998, Frederica von Stade included ‘Not Everyone Thinks That I’m Beautiful.’ It delights me that Sasha Cooke has made this song a part of her repertoire.” 

—MTT

Not everyone thinks that I’m beautiful
Only just a special few.
Headed up by fools like you
It takes one to know one, ooh,
You lucky fools

Not everything works like I hoped it would
Just when I start wanting to stay
I see it’s time that
I was on my way,
Tomorrow gone, here today,
Dear lucky fools

Well I don’t have a fortune to give
All I have is left over dreams that are far out of fashion
Once I wore my heart on my sleeve
Now I try and not call attention to things that I treasure
’Cause I found out
Not everyone thinks what I think is beautiful

So when I see you see it too
I think we might just make it me and you
So here’s to the tried and true
Dear, lucky fools,
Oh, lucky fools
Dear lucky fools

Words and Music by Michael Tilson Thomas

La flûte de Pan from Chansons de Bilitis
Claude Debussy

Born: August 22, 1862, in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France
Died: March 25, 1918, in Paris
Work Composed: 1897

La flûte de Pan
Pour le jour des Hyacinthies, il m’a donné une syrinx faite de roseaux bien taillés, unis avec la blanche cire qui est douce à mes lèvres comme le miel.

Il m’apprend à jouer, assise sur ses genoux ; mais je suis un peu tremblante. Il en joue après moi; si doucement que je l’entends
à peine.

Nous n’avons rien à nous dire, tant nous sommes près l’un de l’autre; mais nos chansons veulent se répondre, et tour à tour nos bouches s’unissent sur la flûte.

Il est tard, voici le chant des grenouilles vertes qui commence avec la nuit. Ma mère ne croira jamais que je suis restée si longtemps à chercher ma ceinture perdue.

—Pierre Louÿs (1870–1925)

Pan’s Flute
For the day of the Hyacinths, he gave me pan-pipes made of well-trimmed reeds, joined together with the white wax which is as sweet as honey to my lips.

He teaches me to play, sitting on his knee; but I am a little nervous. He plays afterwards; so softly that I can hardly hear him.

We have nothing to say to each other, we are so close to each other; but our songs wish to reply to each other, and in turn our mouths are joined on the flute.

It is late, here now is the song of the green frogs which begins at nightfall. My mother will never believe that I stayed so long looking for my lost belt.

Drift Off to Sleep
Michael Tilson Thomas

Work Composed: 1982

Last night I cried myself to sleep
I whispered to my pillow
Who gets the golden ring ya get for keeps?
My friends don’t know
My papa said “Woe is me”

All of the stories sound the same
When you’re over thirty
Same sad but true
Yet diff’rent folks to blame
I can’t see why
To give it that old college try

Well chill out,
Talk it out,
Work it out baby
We still gotta face the world
Tomorrow
See all sides of it, tides of it
Surging and strong
Carrying us along to judgement day
And all along the way
A lot of wiles and whimsy

So come and mind me, 
Lend an ear and do us both a favor
Just open to me until we disappear
Just let it go and be the sweet one I know

Meanwhile, let’s cuddle up and
Drift off to sleep 

Words and Music by Michael Tilson Thomas

Answered Prayers
Michael Tilson Thomas

Work Composed: ca. 1974

I made a bunch of wishes and they all came true
So, what’s a lucky fellow to do?
Pond’ring a delightful dilemma or two.

Well even if you think that you got the joke
You got to go swim it stroke by stroke
Or it doesn’t mean nothin’.

I thought the worst would happen
And one day it did
And even when I thought I was rid 
Of all my cares and woes,
There were still quos pro quid 
And they didn’t cost nothin’.

So what can you do when ev’ry body
Knows that nothin’ will last forever
And ev’ry hour speaks right up in its brand new voice,
So little time, so much to do, 
Mister, will you 

Go pay your money and then take your choice?
‘Cause even if you’re fresh out of rhymes
You got to go and play the fool one more time
Or it doesn’t mean nothing.

And, I’m tellin’ you
The moral of my story could be
“Shoo-be, Doo-be, Shoo-wow, woo!”

Words and Music by Michael Tilson Thomas

Take Back Your Mink from Guys and Dolls
Frank Loesser 

Born: June 29, 1910, in New York
Died: July 28, 1969, in New York
Work Composed: 1950

Take back your mink
Take back your pearls
What made you think
That I was one of those girls? . . .

Words and Music by Frank Loesser

Sentimental Again
Michael Tilson Thomas

Work Composed: 1985

“From 1975 until her passing in 1990, I had the joy of performing and recording with the great Sarah Vaughan. ‘Sentimental Again’ was inspired by and is dedicated to Sarah. Audra McDonald made it her own with the San Francisco Symphony on December 31, 1999, in a New Year’s Eve performance.”

—MTT

Think you’re so clever,
’Til all your very best laid plans go awry,
And then you realize, that nothing’s forever.

So what ya gonna do?
Invent a new and so disarming endeavor
To keep from wond’ring where the time’s all gone
And why you’re so tired,
Or a-buzzing and wired,
Yet still sometimes inspired.

Never you mind
If your sunny morning starts going gray.
It’s much too early to be singing a sorry tune,
A hazy afternoon
Can end a wonderful day.

Come by the fire,
Let my lovin’ take the sting from your tears,
And don’t go thinkin’ that your life was a one way door,
Good things are still in store
No matter what you may fear.

Shame and sorrow,
Every night it seems as if they’re here to stay
Comes tomorrow,
All at once it’s a brand new day
You think that maybe all’s not lost

And perhaps you just might stray 
Back to the way that you felt so strong in fond days of yore.
You tell yourself the art of livin’
Is what you choose,
Everyone wins and loses 
And they still beg for more

Hollow laughter
Oh so many melancholy might-have-beens
Morning afters,
Not a hell of a lot to do, but go pursue
That someone you never know
Who might be true as an old flame
Who makes sure to check on in now and then.
There’s nothing sweeter than the voice of a vet’ran friend,
Someone to call on when you’re getting sentimental again.

Sentimental, getting sentimental,
I’m getting sentimental again.
Sentimental again, getting sentimental again,
I’m getting sentimental again.
No use to pretend,
Every now and then,
I get so sentimental again.

Words and Music by Michael Tilson Thomas

Grace
Michael Tilson Thomas

Work Composed: 1988

“‘Grace’ was written in 1988 for Leonard Bernstein’s 70th birthday celebration at Tanglewood. Soprano Roberta Alexander was the soloist and I accompanied her in the first performance, on August 24. It was part of a marathon concert of music written especially for the occasion. It meant a lot to me that Lenny loved it and asked that we sing it before meals and gatherings during that final period of his life.”

—MTT

Thanks to whoever is there
For this tasty plate of herring!
Thanks to whoever may care
For this tasty plate of herring.

Yesterday, swimming swift in a salty sea
And today, silver offerings made to me
So, if you please, won’t you pass me whatever’s still left
Of this tasty treat we’re sharing
’Cause the truth is it tastes good
Um um um.

Thanks to whoever is there
For the sacred joy of music
And thank you fiddlers and flutists and divas and rock and roll drummers
Thanks to whoever has dared
Give us brave new sounds of music 
Thank you composers, professors, and casual off the cuff hummers

So commend
Singers down through the centuries
Cherished friends Wolfgang, Gustav, George, dear Lenny
It seems to me that we all feel so close to the truth
In the notes our souls declaring
And the truth is it feels good
Yes it does.

So many people calling out to one another, 
Help us to hear them,
Teach us that all men are brothers,
So many people,
So many stories,
So many questions,
So many blessings

Make us grateful whatever comes next
In this life on earth we’re sharing
For the truth is life is good

So many memories

A A A men.

Words and Music by Michael Tilson Thomas

Finale from Chichester Psalms
Leonard Bernstein

Born: August 25, 1918, in Lawrence, Massachusetts
Died: October 14, 1990, in New York
Work Composed: 1965

In 1964 and 1965, except for leading three Young People’s Concerts, Leonard Bernstein took a sabbatical from his duties as music director of the New York Philharmonic. That summer, the New York Times asked Bernstein for an accounting of what he had done. He replied in a long piece of engaging doggerel:

And then I came up with the Chichester Psalms.
These psalms are a simple and modest affair,
Tonal and tuneful and somewhat square,
Certain to sicken a stout John Cager
With its tonics and triads in E-flat major.
But there it stands—the result of my pondering,
Two long months of avant-garde wandering—
My youngest child, old-fashioned and sweet,
And he stands on his own two tonal feet.

The commission for the work had come from the Cathedral at Chichester, Sussex, England, but it was premiered in New York. The finale begins with a Prelude for orchestra alone. The vocal music (set in Hebrew to Psalms 131 and 133) is mellifluous; the close is as slow and quiet as the conductor dares and the chorus can. 

—M.S.

Roman Festivals

Ottorino Respighi

Born: July 9, 1879, in Bologna, Italy
Died: April 18, 1936, in Rome
Work Composed: 1928

Ottorino Respighi’s Roman Festivals is not a work for the timid. It uses one big orchestra, with more than a couple of “special effect” instruments, including buccine—a curved brass instrument of ancient Rome (replaced here with modern brass instruments). Picture toga-clad horn blowers when you hear their fanfare at the outset.

The music speaks for itself, thanks to the composer’s acute tone-painting. In the first movement, the ferocious roaring of the wild beasts comes across loud and clear, thanks to the bass clarinet, bassoons, contrabassoon, horns, trombones, tuba, timpani, cellos, and basses, playing fortissimo. In “The Jubilee” we can easily imagine the procession of weary pilgrims chanting (curiously, a German hymn from the 12th century), and “The October Festival” offers a mixture of celebratory stimulation and autumnal languor. No holds are barred in the concluding “The Epiphany,” whose episodes the composer depicts almost as precisely as if they were photographs. Has a staggering drunkard ever been more unmistakably portrayed than it is here by solo trombone? By the end, Respighi piles up sonority upon sonority to achieve one of the most tumultuous raisings of the roof you will ever hear.

—James M. Keller

In celebration of MTT’s 80th birthday, Pentatone has released Grace: The Music of Michael Tilson Thomas, a four-CD box set featuring 18 works composed by MTT. This special release includes several SF Symphony recordings, both previously released and archival. All proceeds benefit the UCSF Brain Tumor Center.

Teddy Abrams

Teddy Abrams, a Grammy Award winner and Musical America’s 2022 Conductor of the Year, has been the galvanizing force behind the Louisville Orchestra’s artistic renewal since his appointment as Music Director in September 2014.

Abrams and the Louisville Orchestra began their 2024–25 season with Carmina burana with the Louisville Chamber Choir, followed by Ray Chen performing Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto, debut works from members of the 2024–25 Creators Corps, Valerie Coleman’s Concerto for Orchestra, and a staged production of Viktor Ullmann’s chamber opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis. In demand as a guest conductor, he makes his debut this season with the Boston Symphony. He made his San Francisco Symphony conducting debut in 2012.

In April 2023, Abrams premiered his own composition Mammoth with the Louisville Orchestra and Yo-Yo Ma in Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave, and in 2024 his piano concerto for Yuja Wang won a Grammy Award. 

Abrams first came to the attention of Michael Tilson Thomas when he wrote him a letter at age nine. MTT became a mentor, and they have been working together ever since. Abrams was a conducting fellow at the New World Symphony and he has also been a champion of MTT’s compositions.

Edwin Outwater

Edwin Outwater regularly works with the world’s top orchestras, institutions, and artists to reinvent the concert experience. His ability to cross genres has led to collaborations with Metallica, Wynton Marsalis, Renée Fleming, and Yo-Yo Ma. He is music director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and music director laureate of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony.

Recent appearances include the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Seattle Symphony, and the New World Symphony, as well as the Royal Philharmonic in a multi-concert series opening the Steinmetz Hall in Florida. He also served as a producer and musical advisor for the National Symphony Orchestra’s 50th Anniversary Concert at the Kennedy Center. In December 2022, he premiered A Christmas Gaiety at the Royal Albert Hall with Peaches Christ and the BBC Concert Orchestra, and returned in 2023. 

Outwater has held a long association with the San Francisco Symphony. He was appointed Resident Conductor and Wattis Foundation Music Director of the SF Symphony Youth Orchestra by Michael Tilson Thomas in 2001 and they have been friends and colleagues since.

Sasha Cooke

Two-time Grammy Award–winning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke has sung at the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, English National Opera, Seattle Opera, Opéra National de Bordeaux, and Gran Teatre del Liceu, among others, and with more than 80 symphony orchestras worldwide.

This season, Cooke debuts at La Monnaie as Emilie Ekdahl in the world premiere of Fanny and Alexander, sings Marguerite in La Damnation de Faust at the Bard Music Festival, appears as Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde at the Gstaad Festival, and returns to Houston Grand Opera as Venus in Tannhäuser. On the concert stage, she joins the Vienna Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Vienna Radio Symphony, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Cologne Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, London Philharmonia, Oslo Philharmonic, and Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. 

Cooke first appeared under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas as a Shenson Young Artist in January 2010, following her SF Symphony debut the previous year. She also toured Europe with MTT and the Symphony singing Mahler’s Third Symphony. 

Cooke premiered MTT’s Meditations on Rilke, captured on a Grammy-winning SFS Media release, and recorded two of MTT’s songs on Grace: The Music of Michael Tilson Thomas.

Frederica von Stade

Known familiarly as “Flicka,” mezzo-soprano Frederica von Stade has enriched the world of classical music for four and a half decades. Although she retired from full-time performances in 2010, she continues to make special appearances in concert and opera.

Von Stade’s career has taken her to the stages of the world’s great opera houses and concert halls. She began at the top, when she received a contract from Rudolf Bing during the Metropolitan Opera auditions, and following her debut in 1970 sang nearly all of her great roles with that company. In addition, she has appeared with every leading American opera company, including San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Los Angeles Opera. Her career in Europe was no less spectacular, with new productions mounted for her at La Scala, Royal Opera Covent Garden, the Vienna State Opera, and the Paris Opera. She has sung with the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, and made her San Francisco Symphony debut in May 1975. She and Michael Tilson Thomas have been performing together since the 1970s when they both burst onto the New York scene.

Von Stade has enjoyed close collaborations with several contemporary composers, including Jake Heggie, Ricky Ian Gordon, and Dominick Argento, among others. She holds honorary doctorates from Yale University, Boston University, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (which holds a Frederica von Stade Distinguished Chair in Voice), the Georgetown University School of Medicine, and her alma mater, the Mannes School of Music. Von Stade was honored by President Reagan for her significant contributions to the arts and in 1998 she was appointed as an officer in France’s L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Ben Jones

Ben Jones is an award-winning singer, comedian, storyteller, and actor who has shared the spotlight with Rita Moreno, Michael Tilson Thomas, Frederica von Stade, Nathan Gunn, Isabel Leonard, Helmuth Rilling, Michael Morgan, Val Diamond, and the Bang on a Can All-Stars. His versatile voice has been featured on recordings on the Albany, Naxos, and Delos labels, A Prairie Home Companion, the soundtracks for the best-selling video game franchises Halo and Civilization, and on commercials for Coors Light and Meow Mix.

Jones made his Carnegie Hall debut virtually in 2021, performing a selection from Greg Pliska and Charles Moorey’s new musical A Most Dangerous Man in Carnegie Hall’s Voices of Hope festival. He was recently seen in Off-Broadway productions of Twist of Fate and Brooklyn’s Bridge at the York Theatre. He received the Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for Best Performance in a Musical for his portrayal of Sid Sorokin in The Pajama Game. Two of his solo shows—I Think I’m in Love and I Think We Should See Other People—were featured in Broadway World’s Best of 2022 list. He made his debut with MTT and the San Francisco Symphony in September 2017 singing Chichester Psalms, and later appeared in MTT-led productions of Candide and Boris Godunov.

Jessica Vosk

Jessica Vosk is a celebrated singer and actress known for electrifying roles on musical theater and concert stages. She made her Carnegie Hall debut in November 2021 in a sold-out solo show titled My Golden Age and returned in 2022 to headline Get Happy: A Judy Garland Centennial Celebration. Her 2024–25 season includes creating the fan-favorite role of Lute in the animated musical series Hazbin Hotel, creating the role of Cee Cee in the international premiere of the musical adaptation of Beaches, as well as returning to the Muny as Jenna in Waitress. Recently she debuted at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center with No Name Pops and her program California Dreamin’—Songs of the Laurel Canyon, and celebrated the holidays with the National Symphony at the Kennedy Center and the New York Pops in her return to Carnegie Hall.

Best known for her star turn as Elphaba in Wicked, Vosk’s theatrical highlights also include Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Chess, and Sarah Silverman’s The Bedwetter. She had an unconventional journey to Broadway, beginning her career on Wall Street before taking the leap of faith to pursue her dreams on stage. After a hiatus from performing, she was cast by MTT in the San Francisco Symphony production of West Side Story in June 2013. Her one-of-a-kind story has been profiled on ABC’s 20/20 and NBC Nightly News.

John Wilson

John Wilson frequently performs as a pianist with the San Francisco Symphony and serves as principal keyboard for the Marin Symphony, San Diego Symphony, and Oakland Symphony. This season he appears at Carnegie Hall, at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and on the SF Symphony’s Chamber Music Series. He performs Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy with the Berkeley Community Chorus and Orchestra and Grieg’s Piano Concerto with the Marin Symphony. A passionate advocate for contemporary music, Wilson has premiered works by Michael Tilson Thomas, John Adams, Timo Andres, and Steve Reich.

Wilson performed on the Grammy Award–winning recording of Michael Tilson Thomas’s Meditations on Rilke as well as on the recent release of Grace: The Music of Michael Tilson Thomas on Pentatone. His 2022 solo debut album on Avie Records featured the world premiere of MTT’s Upon Further Reflection.

Tom Edler and Peter Grunberg music supervision
Ron Valentino supertitles

San Francisco Symphony Chorus

SOPRANOS

Elaine Abigail
Adeliz Araiza
Naheed Attari
Sylvia V. Baba
Alexis Wong Baird
Morgan Balfour*^
Arlene Boyd
Olivia T. Brown
Helen J. Burns
Laura Canavan
Mun-Wai Chung
Francielle De Barros 
Andrea Drummond
Tonia D’Amelio*
Elizabeth Emigh
Susanna Gilbert
Julia Hall
Elizabeth Heckmann
Betsy Johnsmiller
Becky Lau
Ellen Leslie*
Jennifer Mitchell*
Shroothi P. Ramesh 
Hallie Randel 
Kelly Ryer
Natalia Salemmo*
Rebecca Shipan
Elizabeth L. Susskind
Sarah Vig
Lauren Wilbanks

ALTOS

Carolyn Alexander
Terry A. Alvord*
Melissa Butcher
Celeste Camarena
Carol Copperud
Corty Fengler
Stacey L. Helley
Amy L. Hespenheide
Emily (Yixuan) Huang
Cathleen Josaitis
Gretchen Klein
Donna Kulkarni
Katherine M. Lilly
Joyce Lin-Conrad
Margaret (Peg) Lisi*
Brielle Marina Neilson*
Kimberly J. Orbik
Leandra Ramm*
Meredith Riekse
Celeste Riepe
Jeanne Schoch
Yuri Sebata-Dempster
Sandy Sellin
Dr. Meghan Spyker*
Kyle S. Tingzon*^
Mayo Tsuzuki
Makiko Ueda
Merilyn Telle Vaughn*
Heidi L. Waterman*
Hannah J. Wolf

TENORS

Paul Angelo
Carl A. Boe
Todd Bradley
Seth Brenzel*
Dean Christman
Scott Dickerman
Thomas L. Ellison
Christian Emigh
Elliott JG Encarnación*^
Patrick Fu
Ron Gallman
Kevin Gibbs*
Edward Im
Alec Jeong
Drew Kravin
James Lee
Benjamin Liupaogo*
Benjamin S. Lorenzoni
Andrew P.  McIver
Jack O’Reilly
Ryan S. Peterson
Tetsuya Taura
John A. Vlahides
Jack Wilkins*
John Paul Young
Jakob Zwiener

BASSES

Matthew Ahn
Simon Barrad*^
Phil Buonadonna
Robert Calvert
Sean Casey
Adam Cole*
Noam Cook
James Radcliffe Cowing III
Malcolm Gaines
Rick Galbreath
Richard M. Glendening
Harlan J. Hays*
Roderick Lowe
Tim Marson
Hugo Mendel
Julian Nesbitt
Bradley C. Parese
Mark E. Rubin
Timothy Echavez Salaver
Storm K. Staley
Michael Taylor*
Connor Tench
David Varnum*
Julia Vetter
Nick Volkert*
Goangshiuan Shawn Ying

Jenny Wong, Chorus Director

John Wilson, Rehearsal Accompanist

*Members of the American Guild of Musical Artists
^Chichester Psalms Soloists

San Francisco Symphony Chorus

The San Francisco Symphony Chorus was established in 1973 at the request of Seiji Ozawa, then the Symphony’s Music Director. The Chorus, numbering 32 professional and more than 120 volunteer members, now performs more than 26 concerts each season. Louis Magor served as the Chorus’s director during its first decade. In 1982 Margaret Hillis assumed the ensemble’s leadership, and the following year Vance George was named Chorus Director, serving through 2005–06. Ragnar Bohlin concluded his tenure as Chorus Director in 2021, a post he had held since 2007. Jenny Wong was named Chorus Director in September 2023.

The Chorus can be heard on many acclaimed San Francisco Symphony recordings and has received Grammy Awards for Best Performance of a Choral Work (for Orff’s Carmina burana, Brahms’s German Requiem, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 8), Best Classical Album (for a Stravinsky collection and for Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 and Symphony No. 8), and most recently Best Opera Recording (for Saariaho’s Adriana Mater).

Lead support for the San Francisco Symphony Chorus this season is provided through a visionary gift from an anonymous donor.
To learn more about their generous gift, a new Chorus endowment, and ways to support it, please contact Jay Auslander, Director of Legacy Giving, at 415.503.5404 or jauslander@sfsymphony.org

Jenny Wong

Jenny Wong is Chorus Director of the San Francisco Symphony, as well as the associate artistic director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Recent conducting engagements include the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella Series, Los Angeles Opera Orchestra, the Industry, Long Beach Opera, Pasadena Symphony and Pops, Phoenix Chorale, and Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles.

She has prepared choruses for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, including for a recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 that won a 2022 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance. She has also prepared choruses for the Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and Music Academy of the West.

A native of Hong Kong, Wong received her doctor of musical arts and master of music degrees from the University of Southern California and her undergraduate degree in voice performance from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She won two consecutive world champion titles at the World Choir Games 2010 and the International Johannes Brahms Choral Competition 2011.

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