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An orchestra is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments:
The San Francisco Symphony, founded in 1911, is an American orchestra based in San Francisco, California. Since 1980 the orchestra has been resident at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in the city's Hayes Valley neighborhood. The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus (1972) are part of the organization. Michael Tilson Thomas became the orchestra's music director in 1995, and concluded his tenure in 2020 when Esa-Pekka Salonen took over the position.
Michael Tilson Thomas is an American conductor, pianist and composer. He is Artistic Director Laureate of the New World Symphony, an American orchestral academy based in Miami Beach, Florida, Music Director Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony, and Conductor Laureate of the London Symphony Orchestra.
Esa-Pekka Salonen is a Finnish conductor and composer. He was the music director of the San Francisco Symphony and conductor laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra in London and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. He resigned from the San Francisco Symphony in 2024.
Félix Carrasco-Córdova is a Mexican-Austrian conductor. He has performed successfully near a hundred different orchestras around the world and has gained international recognition for his extraordinary performances. His sensitivity and accurate interpretation of the score has impressed audiences. Some characteristics that critics have applauded are for sound, pitch and rapid response from the musicians.
The California Symphony is a professional orchestra based in Walnut Creek, California, in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. The orchestra, which "may be the most forward-looking music organization around", performs in the Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek and is a member of the Association of California Symphony Orchestras. It has been credited with "redefining the classical concert experience as we know it."
The Pacific Symphony is a symphony orchestra based in Orange County, California. The orchestra performs at the Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall as a part of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California. From 1987 to 2016, the orchestra's Summer Festival concerts took place at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre in Irvine, California.
Margaret Brouwer is an American composer and composition teacher. She founded the Blue Streak Ensemble chamber music group.
The Peninsula Symphony is an American symphony orchestra, based in the San Francisco Peninsula, California. The orchestra consists of over 90 community musicians. In 1995, the Peninsula Symphony was featured in a PBS broadcast.
Ransom Wilson is an American flutist, conductor, and educator.
Mark Grey is an American classical music composer, sound designer and sound engineer.
The New Century Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1992 by cellist, Miriam Perkoff, and violist, Wieslaw Pogorzelski. The goal of the founders was to present classical music in a fresh and unique way in the San Francisco Bay Area. The music director chooses the programs and guides the artistic vision and leads the seventeen members of the orchestra as part of a conductorless orchestra. Musical decisions are made collaboratively, in the goal of enhancing the level of commitment on the part of the musicians and increasing the precision, passion and power of their playing.
Jeffrey Alan Kahane is an American classical concert pianist and conductor. He was music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra for 20 years, the longest of any music director in the orchestra's history. He is the music director of the Sarasota Music Festival, a program of the Sarasota Orchestra, music director-designate of the San Antonio Philharmonic, and a professor of keyboard studies (Piano) at the USC Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles, California.
William McGlaughlin is an American composer, conductor, music educator, and Peabody Award-winning classical music radio host. He is the host and music director of the public radio programs Exploring Music and Saint Paul Sunday.
Masterworks Chorale is a choral ensemble based in San Mateo, California.
Richard Fleischman is an American violist and viola d'amore player, conductor and pedagogue.
Redwood Symphony is an American orchestra based in Redwood City, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is the Orchestra in Residence at Cañada College. Redwood Symphony is an all-volunteer orchestra dedicated to the creation of an alternative model of the symphony orchestra in the 21st century. To accomplish this goal, the orchestra concentrates on ambitious, contemporary repertoire, experiments with the concert format and adopts a more informal mode of dress than most other groups. Notable accomplishments are performances of all of the symphonies of Gustav Mahler and many world and local premieres.
Emanuel Leplin was a composer, conductor, and painter active mainly in the second half of the 20th century. He was born in San Francisco, and joined the San Francisco Symphony as a violist in 1941, conducting it in two of his own works, in 1941 and 1947. In 1954, he contracted polio, and afterward, was unable to hold a brush or compose using anything below his neck but the first three fingers of his right hand. With these fingers he composed three symphonies, a violin concerto, and many other works for orchestra and chamber groups.
Black conductors are musicians of African, Caribbean, African-American ancestry and other members of the African diaspora who are musical ensemble leaders who direct classical music performances, such as an orchestral or choral concerts, or jazz ensemble big band concerts by way of visible gestures with the hands, arms, face and head. Conductors of African descent are rare, as the vast majority are male and Caucasian.
Robert Grove Hughes (1933–2022) was an American composer, conductor, bassoonist and music scholar based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was known for his wide-ranging artistic interests—extending to poetry, performance art and social commentary—and advocacy of contemporary, often experimental music. San Francisco Chronicle critic Joshua Kosman described Hughes as a visionary and "musical Zelig" who "played a key role in a vast range of ambitious and influential musical projects." In the 1960s, Hughes co-founded the long-running Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music and co-founded and led the award-winning Oakland Symphony Youth Orchestra. In subsequent decades he co-founded and led the Arch Ensemble for Experimental Music with baritone vocalist Thomas Buckner and co-directed the performance group MA FISH CO with his wife, artist Margaret Fisher.
