Jan. 9-11, 2025: American Conductor James Gaffigan Returns to Lead the San Francisco Symphony

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 
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American Conductor James Gaffigan Returns to
Lead the San Francisco Symphony 

Onetime Associate Conductor Under Michael Tilson Thomas
Reunites With Orchestra

Program Pairs Missy Mazzoli’s Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres)
with Barber’s Violin Concerto, Featuring Soloist Ray Chen
and Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 5

January 9, 10 and 11, 2025
Davies Symphony Hall | San Francisco, CA

“a feisty intensity” – The New York Times

“effortlessly chic” – The Washington Post

“Gaffigan is one of the most promising conductors of his generation.” – Musical America

www.jamesgaffigan.com

San Francisco, CA (November 7, 2024) – Praised for his "impassioned leadership" (The Wall Street Journal) and "meticulous presentation" (OperaWire), American conductor James Gaffigan returns to lead the San Francisco Symphony from Thursday, January 9 to Saturday, January 11, 2025, at Davies Symphony Hall. The engagement reconnects Gaffigan with a formative period in his career, when he served from 2006 to 2009 as the orchestra’s Associate Conductor under Michael Tilson Thomas – who created the role expressly for Gaffigan. He has since been welcomed back for guest-conducting engagements in January 2017, April and May of 2019 and May 2021, when he led one of the orchestra’s first live concerts following pandemic closures.

This coming January, he conducts a program pairing Missy Mazzoli's Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) with Barber’s Violin Concerto, featuring violinist Ray Chen, and Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5. In Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres), Mazzoli creates what she calls “music in the shape of a solar system, a collection of rococo loops that twist around each other within a larger orbit. … It is a piece that churns and roils, that inches close to the listener only to leap away at breakneck speed.”

The program also features Samuel Barber's only Violin Concerto, in which Barber composed the first two movements while traveling in Europe in the late 1930s, but returned to the U.S. with the work unfinished due to the growing Nazi threat. The program closes with Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony, described by the composer as “a hymn to free and happy Man, to his mighty powers, his pure and noble spirit.”

Commenting on his U.S. schedule this season, Gaffigan said, “It is rare for me these days to spend time in the States, so I have chosen carefully to return to organizations that mean a great deal to me, including the San Francisco Symphony as well as the Houston Grand Opera, Chicago Symphony Orchestra and National Symphony Orchestra. Some of my greatest memories of working in the United States have come out of San Francisco, and I look forward to meeting the newest members of the orchestra on my return.”

On the SFS program, he expressed that the selected works would highlight the full talents of the orchestra through the divergent styles of Barber and Prokofiev, as well as a celebrated living composer in Mazzoli. “It's exciting to return to one of the most versatile orchestras in the country, and I’ve chosen music that showcases that,” he said. “The Prokofiev in particular will show them in an incredible light.”

Reflecting further on his history with the San Francisco Symphony, he described both Michael Tilson Thomas and current Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen as mentors, crediting Salonen as one of the first established conductors to take an interest in his early career, and Thomas as “one of my inspirations, with an amazing imagination for music,” Gaffigan said. “Both of these last two music directors have been so generous with their time and knowledge – as mentors, and now as colleagues. Returning to San Francisco is like returning to family.”

After the program in San Francisco, Gaffigan leads the Houston Grand Opera (HGO) in the annual Eleanor McCollum Competition Concert of Arias on January 17, 2025. For the first time, the HGO Orchestra accompanies the 2025 finalists in this competition for talented young artists, who will compete for cash prizes and an invitation to join the prestigious Sarah and Ernest Butler Houston Grand Opera Studio, which provides comprehensive career development for emerging opera singers. For Gaffigan, an alumnus of Houston’s Rice University, this marks his return to HGO after several years.

Among his additional season highlights, Gaffigan returns to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on May 31, 2025, conducting a musical “American Road Trip” featuring Dvorák's American Suite followed by two works by Leonard Bernstein: Three Dance Episodes from On the Town and Overture to Candide. Completing the program are three pieces by Gershwin – Summertime and My Man's Gone Now from Porgy and Bess, and An American in Paris – as well as two songs by Florence Price. From June 12 to June 14, 2025, Gaffigan leads the National Symphony Orchestra in three concerts spotlighting film music by classical composers, including Bernstein's soundtrack for On the Waterfront and Nino Rota's music for The Godfather. The first of these concerts features GRAMMY® Award winner James Ehnes in a performance of James Newton Howard's Violin Concerto No. 2, while the second incorporates Michael Abels’ work Delights and Dances, and the third spotlights Abel Pereira in John Williams’ Horn Concerto.

Program Information
Thursday, January 9, 2025 at 7:30pm
Friday, January 10, 2025 at 7:30pm
Saturday, January 11, 2025 at 7:30pm
San Francisco Symphony
Davies Symphony Hall | San Francisco, CA
Tickets: $30 - $199
Link: www.sfsymphony.org/Buy-Tickets/2024-25/jamesgaffigan-raychen

Program:
Missy Mazzoli  – Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres)
Samuel Barber  – Violin Concerto
Sergei Prokofiev  – Symphony No. 5

San Francisco Symphony Orchestra
James Gaffigan, conductor
Ray Chen, violin

About James Gaffigan
Recognized worldwide for his natural ease and extraordinary collaborative spirit, American conductor James Gaffigan has attracted international attention for his prowess as a conductor of both symphony orchestras and opera. The mutual trust he builds with artists empowers them to cultivate the highest art possible.

Gaffigan is uniquely positioned with Music Directorships at two international opera houses. He is the General Music Director of Komische Oper Berlin, where he begins his second season in 2024-2025, and Music Director of the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía in Valencia, where he enters his fourth season off widely acclaimed productions of Wozzeck, La Bohème, and Tristan und Isolde.

In his 2024-2025 season with Komische Oper Berlin, Gaffigan leads productions of Sweeney Todd, The Magic Flute and Don Giovanni, among others. At Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía, he conducts a varied season of programming including a staging of Der fliegende Holländer. Guest engagements include his debut with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester and returns to the Vienna Philharmonic, Czech Philharmonic, Luzerner Sinfonieorchester and Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks. In the United States, he makes return engagements with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony and Houston Grand Opera.

During the 2023/24 season, Gaffigan made returns to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, and the St. Louis Symphony. In Summer 2023, Gaffigan led the Metropolitan Opera in their production of La Bohème, as well as the Orchestra de Paris with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and Verbier Festival Junior Orchestra. Other recent orchestral appearances include London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Wiener Symphoniker, Münchner Philharmoniker, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Norske Opera and Ballet, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, Staatskapelle Berlin, Czech Philharmonic and Luzerner Symphonieorchester. In North America, Gaffigan regularly works with the New York Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Detroit Symphony Orchestra, among others.

The 2022/23 season marked Gaffigan’s final season as Principal Guest Conductor of both the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra & Opera. In 2021, he finished his tenure as Chief Conductor of the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester, a position he held for 10 years, where he raised the orchestra’s international profile with highly successful recordings and tours abroad. A regular at the Metropolitan Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper, and Opéra National de Paris, Gaffigan has also conducted the Zürich Opera, Vienna Staatsoper, Staatsoper Hamburg, Dutch National Opera, Glyndebourne Festival, Lyric Opera of Chicago and Santa Fe Opera.

Gaffigan was first-prize winner of the 2004 Sir Georg Solti International Conducting Competition, which opened Europe’s doors to him as a young American. In 2009, he completed a three-year tenure as Associate Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, a position created for him by Michael Tilson Thomas. Prior to that, he was Assistant Conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra, where he worked with Music Director Franz Welser-Möst. Gaffigan is an alumnus of the Aspen Music Festival’s Aspen Conducting Academy and the Tanglewood Music Center.

Passionate about music education and a product of the New York City public school system, Gaffigan grew up in New York City and studied at the LaGuardia High School of Music and Art before pursuing his conducting studies. He believes that access to music education is the method by which America’s concert halls will finally begin to reflect our community and shrink the racial and gender gaps that exist in the performing arts today.

About Ray Chen
Violinist and online personality, Ray Chen redefines what it means to be a classical musician in the 21st century. With a global reach that enhances and inspires a new classical audience, Ray Chen's remarkable musicianship transmits to millions around the world, reflected through his engagements both online and with the foremost orchestras and concert halls around the world. Beyond the performing arts, his work has also contributed to philanthropy, popular culture and educational technology.

Initially coming to attention via the Yehudi Menuhin (2008) and Queen Elizabeth (2009) Competitions, of which he was First Prize winner, he has built a profile in Europe, Asia, and the USA as well as his native Australia both live and on disc. Signed in 2017 to Decca Classics, the summer of 2017 has seen the recording of the first album of this partnership with the London Philharmonic as a succession to his previous three critically acclaimed albums on SONY, the first of which (“Virtuoso”) received an ECHO Klassik Award. Profiled as “one to watch” by the Strad and Gramophone magazines, his profile has grown to encompass his featuring in the Forbes list of 30 most influential Asians under 30, appearing in major online TV series “Mozart in the Jungle”, a multi-year partnership with Giorgio Armani (who designed the cover of his Mozart album with Christoph Eschenbach) and performing at major media events such as France’s Bastille Day (live to 800,000 people), the Nobel Prize Concert in Stockholm (telecast across Europe), and the BBC Proms.

He has appeared with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, Munich Philharmonic, Filarmonica della Scala, Orchestra Nazionale della Santa Cecilia, Los Angeles Philharmonic, SWR Symphony, New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony, Berlin Radio Symphony, and Bavarian Radio Chamber Orchestra. He works with conductors such as Riccardo Chailly, Vladimir Jurowski, Sakari Oramo, Manfred Honeck, Daniele Gatti, Kirill Petrenko, Krystof Urbanski, and Juraj Valcuha.

More recently, Ray Chen co-founded Tonic, an independent startup that aims to motivate musicians and learners around the world to practice their craft together. Although new, the innovative app has cultivated a highly engaged and supportive community and is available to download on iOS and Android today. Ray Chen’s presence on social media makes him a pioneer in an artist’s interaction with their audience, utilizing the new opportunities of modern technology. His appearances and interactions with music and musicians are instantly disseminated to a new public in a contemporary and relatable way. He is an ambassador for SONY Electronics, a music consultant for Riot Games - the leading esports company best known for League of Legends, and has been featured in Vogue magazine. He released his own design of a violin case for the industry manufacturer GEWA and proudly plays Thomastik Infeld strings. His commitment to music education is paramount, and inspires the younger generation of music students with his series of self-produced videos combining comedy, education and music. Through his online promotions his appearances regularly sell out and draw an entirely new demographic to the concert hall.

Born in Taiwan and raised in Australia, Ray was accepted to the Curtis Institute of Music at age 15, where he studied with Aaron Rosand and was supported by Young Concert Artists. He plays the 1714 “Dolphin” Stradivarius violin on loan from the Nippon Music Foundation. This instrument was once owned by the famed violinist, Jascha Heifetz. Learn more at www.raychenviolin.com/.

*Photo Credit: Miguel Lorenzo

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