Current Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Michael Tilson Thomas, assumed the post in 1995, and is currently the longest-serving music director in the San Francisco Symphony’s history. He steps onto the podium to lead the orchestra in a new season of thirteen San Francisco Symphony Broadcasts, airing on DZFE through our long partnership with the WFMT Radio Network beginning January 9 (Sat 1900).
On the inaugural program, Michael Tilson Thomas conducts and actress and dancer Leslie Caron narrates Stravinsky’s Perséphone with tenor Nicholas Phan, the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, the San Francisco Girls’ Chorus and the Pacific Boychoir. The program also includes the always-popular Firebird.
Later in the series, Finnish conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen leads the San Francisco Symphony in a concert of tone poetry, including Thorvaldsdottir’s Metacosmos, Richard Strauss’ iconic Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30, and Sibelius’ Four Legends from the Kalevala, Op. 22.
Also this season, pianist Hélène Grimaud is soloist in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4, and James Gaffigan conducts the orchestra in Wagner’s Good Friday Spell from Parsifal, Mozart’s Symphony No. 31 in D “Paris”, and Barber’s Symphony No. 1, Op. 9.