San Francisco Symphony

Esa-Pekka Salonen is known as both a composer and conductor. He is the Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony, where he works alongside eight Collaborative Partners from a variety of disciplines, ranging from composers to roboticists. He is the Conductor Laureate for London’s Philharmonia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. As a member of the faculty of Los Angeles’s Colburn School, he develops, leads, and directs the pre-professional Negaunee Conducting Program. Salonen co-founded, and from 2003 until 2018 served as the Artistic Director of, the annual Baltic Sea Festival. 

Since joining the San Francisco Symphony in 2020, Salonen has defined his tenure with an impulse to expand and embrace the possibilities of the orchestra. In addition to an unprecedented leadership model in which he is joined by eight Collaborative Partners—whose diversity of expertise reflects the scope of experience he envisions as the future of classical music and its audience—Salonen has launched a residency-based touring model with an eye to a future of climate-conscious community building; established the California Festival, a two-week, inter-institutional statewide celebration which he conceived alongside Gustavo Dudamel and Rafael Payare; and led a series of collaborations across disciplines and practices which unite the Symphony’s musicians, administrative staff, and hands-on facility workers into a singular engine dedicated to engaging classical music in novel ways.  

Beginning with the Opening Night Gala, Salonen will lead the Symphony in twelve weeks of programming. Early season highlights will include world premieres of Jesper Nordin’s violin concerto Convergences, with Collaborative Partner Pekka Kuusisto, and Anders Hillborg’s Piano Concerto, with Emanuel Ax. In November, Salonen will conduct the inaugural California Festival; San Francisco programming will include the world premiere of Jens Ibsen’s Drowned in Light and the San Francisco premieres of Gabriella Smith’s Breathing Forest and Salonen’s own kínēma. 

In the Spring, Salonen will conduct pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet in performances of Scriabin’s Prometheus: The Poem of Fire, featuring a unique take on the composer’s color organ; he also curates and conducts a program for the Symphony’s SoundBox series He will then lead an all-Sibelius program both in San Francisco and on tour in Southern California. Salonen closes the Symphony’s season with four weeks of programming in June, beginning with a program of Ravel’s Ma mère l’Oye, with choreography by Alonzo King LINES Ballet, and Schoenberg’s Erwartung, in a new staged production by Peter Sellars. Other late-season highlights include the Orchestral Series debut of Sheku Kanneh-Mason; San Francisco Symphony premiere of Sofia Gubaidulina’s Fairytale Poem; and a performance of Robert Schumann’s Piano Concerto, with soloist Yefim Bronfman. The season formally concludes with Mahler’s Symphony No. 3. 

Salonen will also conduct many of his own works this season. In October, he leads the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the world premiere of a short new work composed in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall; he returns to Los Angeles in December to conduct his sprawling, Dada-infused Karawane. He also leads his 2023 Sinfonia Concertante for Organ and Orchestra with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Philadelphia Orchestra; Olivier Latry will appear as soloist with both orchestras. Other conducting highlights include the Philadelphia Orchestra premiere of his recent piece kínēma; an all-Hillborg program with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra; performances in London and Germany with the Philharmonia Orchestra; an extended three-week engagement with the Orchestre de Paris; and concerts with the New York Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony Orchestra. 

Esa-Pekka Salonen has an extensive and varied recording career, both as a conductor and composer. With the San Francisco Symphony, he has released recordings of Béla Bartók’s three piano concertos with Pierre-Laurent Aimard on Pentatone, as well as spatial audio recordings of Györgi Ligeti’s Clocks and Clouds, Lux Aeterna, and Ramifications on Apple Music Classical. Other recent recordings include Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs, recorded with Lise Davidsen and the Philharmonia Orchestra; Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin and Dance Suite, also with the Philharmonia; Stravinsky’s Perséphone, featuring Andrew Staples, Pauline Cheviller, and the Finnish National Opera, and a 2018 box set of his complete Sony recordings. His compositions appear on releases from Sony, Deutsche Grammophon, and Decca; his Piano Concerto (with Yefim Bronfman), Violin Concerto (with Leila Josefowicz), and Cello Concerto (with Yo-Yo Ma) all appear on recordings conducted by Salonen himself. 

Salonen is the recipient of many major awards, including the UNESCO Rostrum Prize for his work Floof in 1992, and the Siena Prize, given by the Accademia Chigiana, in 1993; he is the first conductor to receive it. In 1995 he received the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Opera Award and two years later, its Conductor Award. Salonen was awarded the Litteris et Artibus medal, one of Sweden’s highest honors, by the King of Sweden in 1996. In 1998 the French government awarded him the rank of Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In addition to receiving both the Pro Finlandia Medal of the Order of the Lion of Finland and the Helsinki Medal, he was named Commander, First Class of the Order of the Lion of Finland by the President of Finland. Musical America named him its Musician of the Year in 2006, and he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010. His Violin Concerto won the 2012 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. He was the recipient of the  

2014 Nemmers Composition Prize, which included a residency at the Henry and Leigh Bienen  

School of Music at Northwestern University and performances by the Chicago Symphony  

Orchestra. Also in 2014, he was awarded the Gloria Artis Medal for Merit to Culture by Poland’s Minister of Culture. In 2020, he was appointed an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II. To date, he has received seven honorary doctorates in four different countries. 

Three-time Grammy Award-winning violinist Hilary Hahn melds expressive musicality and technical expertise with a diverse repertoire guided by artistic curiosity. Her barrier-breaking attitude towards classical music and commitment to sharing her experiences with a global community has made her a fan favorite. Hahn is a prolific recording artist and commissioner of new works, and her 23 feature recordings have received every critical prize in the international press. She is currently in the midst of her third year as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s first-ever Artist-in-Residence and is Artist-in-Residence at the New York Philharmonic, Visiting Artist at The Juilliard School, and Curating Artist of the Dortmund Festival. 

Hahn is a frequent commissioner and performer of works by living composers, and her 2023–24 repertoire includes several new and recent works by Barbara Assiginaak, Steven Banks, Jennifer Higdon, Jessie Montgomery, and Carlos Simon, among others. Hahn performs these alongside compositions by Mozart, Mendelssohn, Sibelius, Brahms, Prokofiev, Korngold, Ginastera, Sarasate, Barber, and Copland in concerts with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Colombian Youth Orchestra, the Israel, Los Angeles, and New York Philharmonics, and the Chicago, National, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestras. 

In addition to her orchestral appearances, Hahn will give several solo recitals and small-ensemble performances this season. Beginning in September with a recital in Athens, GA, Hahn will perform three solo Bach recitals; other dates include an October performance in Kansas City, where she opens the 2023– 24 Harriman Jewell Series, and a March recital in New York as part of her residency with the New York Philharmonic. As Curating Artist of the Dortmund Festival, Hahn will perform a duo recital with organist Iveta Apkalna, join cellist Seth Parker Woods in a recital program as well as a performance of contemporary American repertoire with London’s Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, perform Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra, lead one of her signature “Bring Your Own Baby” concerts, and host a master class for violinists of all levels.  

A strong advocate for new music, Hahn has championed works by a diverse array of contemporary composers, and has personally commissioned more than 40 composers to write works in a wide range of formats. Her 2021 recording Paris features the world premiere recording of Rautavaara’s Deux Sérénades, a piece written for Hahn and which she premiered in 2019. Other recent commissions include Michael Abels’s “Isolation Variation”, Hahn’s recording of which was nominated for a Grammy; Barbara Assiginaak’s “Sphynx Moth”; Lera Auerbach’s Sonata No. 4: Fractured Dreams; and 6 Partitas by Antón García Abril.  

García Abril, Auerbach, and Rautavaara had been contributing composers for “In 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores”, Hahn’s Grammy Award-winning multi-year commissioning project. 

Hahn has related to her fans naturally from the very beginning of her career. She has committed to signings after nearly every concert and maintains and shares a collection of the fan-art she has received over the course of 20 years. Her “Bring Your Own Baby” concerts create opportunities for parents of infants to share their enjoyment of live classical music with their children in a nurturing, welcoming environment. Hahn’s commitment to her fans extends to a long history of educational outreach. Her social media-based practice initiative, #100daysofpractice, has transformed practice into a community-building celebration of artistic development; since Hahn created the hashtag in 2017, fellow performers and students have contributed nearly one million posts. A former Suzuki student, she released new recordings of the first three books of the Suzuki Violin School in 2020. In 2019, she released a book of sheet music for “In 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores”, which includes her own fingerings and bowings and performance notes for each work. 

Hahn is a prolific and celebrated recording artist whose feature albums on Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, and Sony have all opened in the top ten of the Billboard charts. Her most recent album celebrates her artistic lineage with a recording of Ysaÿe’s six sonatas for solo violin. Three of Hahn’s albums—her 2003 Brahms and Stravinsky concerto disc, a 2008 pairing of Schoenberg and Sibeliu concerti, and her 2013 recording of In 27 Pieces: the Hilary Hahn Encores—have been awarded Grammys. Jennifer Higdon’s Violin Concerto, which was composed for Hahn and which she recorded in 2008, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. 

Hahn is the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions. In recent seasons, she was named Musical America’s Artist of the Year for 2023, delivered the keynote speech of the Second Annual Women in Classical Music Symposium, received the 2021 Herbert von Karajan award, and was awarded the eleventh Annual Glasshütte Original Music Festival Award, which she donated to the Philadelphia-based music education nonprofit Project 440. Hahn was the 2022 Chubb Fellow at Yale University’s Timothy Dwight College; she also holds honorary doctorates from Middlebury College—where she spent four summers in the total-immersion German, French, and Japanese language programs—and Ball State University, where there are three scholarships in her name.