Finnish composer Esa-Pekka Salonen returns to the San Francisco Symphony after leaving his role as music director with the orchestra in June 2025.
Josie Lepe/Josie Lepe / Special to The Chronicle
Esa-Pekka Salonen will be back on the podium again with the San Francisco Symphony — even if for just one program.
The orchestra’s former music director, who left after only five years at the helm, returns to Davies Symphony Hall in April 2027. The appearance during the Symphony’s 2026-27 season, announced Thursday, March 26, will mark Salonen’s first time back since abruptly stepping down due to differences with the Board of Governors over artistic and financial priorities.
Salonen will be conducting Berlioz’s “Symphony fantastique” and the world premiere of Rene Orth’s Concerto for Harp and Percussion, a Symphony commission. Symphony principal harp Katherine Siochi and principal percussion Jacob Nissly — an orchestra couple who will be married this summer — are the soloists for the latter.
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And with him, it seems the fall arts season signals a return to the exciting programming that characterized the Symphony for 30 years under Salonen and his predecessor Michael Tilson Thomas.
“This season is a musical portrait of San Francisco — bold, curious, and constantly evolving,” Symphony CEO Matthew Spivey said in a statement.
San Francisco Symphony Executive Director Matthew Spivey and Board President Priscilla Geeslin at Davies Symphony Hall.
Gabrielle Lurie/The Chronicle
Lacking the vision of a music director — the 2026-27 season will be the Symphony’s second without one — such programming could not have happened without Michael Gandlmayr. Hired as senior director of artistic planning late last year, he developed the upcoming season in collaboration with other members of the orchestra’s internal artistic planning team and the 26 guest conductors who will lead concerts starting this fall.
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“Since I arrived in San Francisco last September, I have been struck by the city’s vibrancy and openness to new experiences, which we’ve sought to reflect in the 2026–27 programming,” Gandlmayr said in a statement.
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The lineup features broadly diverse music connecting the natural world to the more personal human realms of the spirit, faith, myth and imagination, Gandlmayr added.
Several multimedia concerts also incorporate the interdisciplinary collaborations that were common under Thomas and Salonen, but absent during 2025-26.
Alonzo King Lines Ballet will bring two world premiere dances to the San Francisco Symphony 2026-27 season.
Chris Hardy
The season’s focus begins with Richard Strauss’s “Four Last Songs,” an autumnal meditation on both nature and approaching death, sung by the renowned soprano Renée Fleming under the baton of debuting Finnish conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali (Oct. 1-4).
Composer Gabriella Smith, a Bay Area native known for her focus on nature, will be the orchestra’s creative partner for the season. Her new violin concerto, “How to Be a Bird,” a Symphony co-commission, receives its first Davies performance with Alexi Kenney as the soloist (March 18-20). The program also includes Einojuhani Rautavaara’s “Cantus Arcticus” (Arctic song), which incorporates birdsong. Finnish conductor Dima Slobodeniouk will be on the podium.
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Additionally, Smith’s “Tumblebird Contrails” appears on a program led by Ryan Bancroft, principal conductor of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra (June 17-18, 2027). The bill features Carl Nielsen’s Symphony No. 4, “The Inextinguishable” and “The Dharma at Big Sur,” by Berkeley composer John Adams. Bay Area photographer Deborah O’Grady’s still images and videos of California landscapes will accompany Adams’ work.
Alonzo King Lines Ballet is slated to bring two world premiere dances to conductor James Gaffigan’s program (Nov. 19-21). Award-winning puppeteer and director Janni Younge stages Igor Stravinsky’s “The Firebird,” incorporating oversized puppets and South African dance forms, on an all-Stravinsky program led by Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cabrillo Festival Music Director Cristian Măcelaru (June 3-5, 2027).
Also in April, the Symphony will tour again with a three-concert trip to Southern California (April 15-17, 2027) led by former San Francisco Opera music director Donald Runnicles, who infused Mahler and Berg with enormous color and vitality when he returned the orchestra last September after a 20 year absence.
Symphony Conductor Laureate Herbert Blomstedt, who will turn 100 in July 2027, leads Schubert’s Symphony No. 3 and Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4, “Romantic” (Jan. 14-16).
San Francisco Symphony Conductor Laureate Herbert Blomstedt
Stefan Cohen/San Francisco Symphony
Louisville Symphony Music Director Teddy Abrams, a protégé of Thomas and incoming artistic director of the Ojai Music Festival, leads Bloch’s “Sacred Service” (May 22, 2027) in partnership with San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El.
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Other season highlights include performances of Russian-Swedish composer Victoria Borisova-Ollas’s “The Kingdom of Silence.” (Oct. 9-11); the 90-year-old Estonian minimalist Arvo Pärt’s Magnificat receives its first Symphony performances (Oct. 29-31); “Andromède,” a symphonic poem by the 19th century French composer Augusta Holmès (Nov. 13-15); a new work by Kyle Rivera, winner of the 2026 Emerging Black Composers Project (Feb. 11-13); and Haydn’s oratorio “The Creation,” conducted by Jane Glover (April 3-4, 2027).
Among the returning guest conductors are pioneering conductor Marin Alsop (Jan. 22-24); Jaap van Zweden, who led a memorable opening gala last September and will continue his three-season survey of Beethoven’s symphonies (Feb. 18-20 and 25-27); and Manfred Honeck, music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony, whose gravely beautiful re-imagining of Mozart’s Requiem made an indelible impression in February (March 5-7).
Giancarlo Guerrero leads the opening gala on Sept. 24. The evening will feature violinist Hilary Hahn, a regular soloist with the Symphony who returns to the concert stage after being sidelined by a double pinched nerve last year, to play Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto.
Violinist Hilary Hahn, left, performing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony on May 29, 2025 at Davies Symphony Hall.
Kristen Loken/San Francisco Symphony
Special events include performances by jazz vocalist Samara Joy (Sept. 8), who won the 2023 Grammy Award for best new artist; South African-born indie folk singer Gregory Alan Isakov (Sept. 15); and three-time Grammy-winning Oakland hero Fantastic Negrito (Sept. 26).
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A film series (Sept. 10-May 21, 2027), with a screening of eight movies backed by the orchestra, includes “Avatar,” “Return of the Jedi” and Tim Burton’s holiday classic “A Nightmare Before Christmas,” among others.
Joe Hisaishi, the composer behind a dozen animated Studio Ghibli films, leads a program of his own works in October, including a new Concerto for Orchestra, aSymphony commission receiving its West Coast premiere.
The orchestra’s SoundBox series, late-night concerts presented in a warehouse-like rehearsal space at Davies, again has just two programs. The first, in January, is curated by violinist Vijay Gupta, founder of Los Angeles’ Street Symphony, which performs in shelters, jails, transitional housing sites and community centers. Conductor Edwin Outwater, who celebrates 25 years of collaboration with the Symphony, curates the April program.
Subscriptions and Compose Your Own series tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Thursday. Single tickets become available on July 18.
Although the Symphony reached a contract settlement with the musicians in September, just hours before the 2025-26 season opening gala, questions remain about the orchestra’s finances.
Ticket sales and funds from the endowment cover only about 60% of the orchestra’s expenses, despite the Symphony finishing the most recent fiscal year with a reduced operating deficit from prior years. Expenses were only slightly higher than revenue, according to Symphony spokesperson Taryn Lott, though she did not provide any dollar amounts.
Starla Breshears will join the San Francisco Symphony for its 2026-27 season.
Courtesy of Matthew Washburn
Still, the institution hopes to upgrade the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall. The Symphony’s tax filings show it paid $2,618,299 to Mark Cavagnero Associates and $449,334 to Gehry Partnership, the firms developing plans for the proposed renovation.
It is not actively fundraising for the project, but trustee Jerome Dodson told The New York Times in 2024 that he has pledged $50 million toward adding a small concert hall to the campus.
As the search for a new music director continues — Lott told the Chronicle the organization has already met strong candidates for the position — there are other key vacancies in the trombone and horn sections. While new principal horn Diego Incertis Sánchez came on board in January, the orchestra still lacks an associate principal horn, assistant principal horn and utility horn.
The Symphony also recently announced the hiring of 18-year-old cellist Starla Breshears, who joins the orchestra in September.
For full season details, see sfsymphony.org.
Lisa Hirsch is a freelance writer.