Elim Chan is 39, she trains with a boxing coach, and as of this morning she is the next music director of the San Francisco Symphony, beginning in 2027. She is the 13th person to hold the job in the orchestra's 115-year history, and the first woman ever to lead one of the so-called "Big 7" American orchestras; the club that includes New York, Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and us. That is a real ceiling, and it just broke in San Francisco.
Chan joins other notable first women in the 2020s. Eun Sun Kim became the first woman to serve as music director of the San Francisco Opera, taking the post in 2021; her contract now runs through the 2030–31 season. Tamara Rojo, the former English National Ballet star and Royal Ballet principal, became artistic director of San Francisco Ballet in December 2022, and she has spent her tenure since commissioning new work and upending the classics.
Chan signed a six-year contract, and she becomes music director designate immediately and takes the podium for real in September 2027, opening the 2027–28 season. If you want to meet her sooner, she conducts Davies on June 5 and 6: Wagner's Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, Berlioz's Les Nuits d'été with mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, and Debussy's La Mer. There is a party after the Friday show. Go. Bring someone who thinks the Symphony isn't for them.
Hong Kong-born, US-trained, Chan landed at Smith College studying Italian and forensics before the college choir rerouted her entire life. In 2014 she became the first woman to win the Donatella Flick conducting competition in London, which got her a season as assistant conductor at the London Symphony. She was principal conductor of the Antwerp Symphony from 2019 to 2024, alongside a stint as principal guest at the Royal Scottish National Orchestra before that, and she conducted the First Night of the Proms in 2024. CEO Matthew Spivey called her "a musician of unusual gifts and a leader of equal substance."
She is also walking into a house that—and I have to discuss it—spent the last two years putting out fires. And struggling to do so.
Esa-Pekka Salonen, the brilliant Finn who succeeded the beloved Michael Tilson Thomas, announced in March 2024 that he would not renew his contract. He left after the 2024–25 season, his fifth, which is a remarkably short run for a music director of his stature. His parting line has become the most-quoted sentence in Bay Area classical music: "I do not share the same goals for the future of the institution as the Board of Governors does."
Translation, as best anyone outside the boardroom can offer it: Salonen wanted to build, and the board wanted to cut. Under financial pressure, management trimmed the programs that made Salonen; SoundBox, semi-staged productions, new commissions, touring, the Concerts for Kids that introduced a generation of children to a live orchestra.
The musicians did not take it quietly: they wrote an open letter saying the board's "lack of investment in the future of the Symphony" had driven away a world-class maestro. They handed out leaflets before concerts. A petition asking the board to keep him gathered more than 8,000 signatures. Board chair Priscilla Geeslin called the split "bittersweet."
If you read my work then you know that I am, unabashedly, glamour first and arts administration a distant second; I have read more gala seating charts than annual reports, and I regret nothing. But of course I learn the musicians' names; I talk to them in the lobby when they approach (and they do); I notice which cellist is having a great night, and when they're wearing black sequins instead of traditional suiting. World-class people doing world-class work always pull at my heartstrings, especially when we all share the same city.
Which is why the last few years have been hard to watch. The Symphony has been through the wringer. There was the end of the Michael Tilson Thomas era, when the man who spent 25 years making this orchestra famous stepped down in 2020. Then, last month, there was losing him for good; MTT died in April at 81, and the city is still a little hollow about it. There was Salonen walking out the door.
The musicians played roughly 300 days without a contract across 2022 and 2023. After the pandemic, when orchestras everywhere cut pay and then restored it, San Francisco's players were the only ones among their peer orchestras whose salaries never fully came back. The Symphony Chorus got it worse. Management floated cutting the 32 paid singers' compensation by something close to 80 percent, from around $21,600 a season to roughly $4,300. The singers struck, and the 2024 season opener got canceled. That fight didn't settle until December 2024.
Days before the season-opening gala in September 2025, the orchestra voted to authorize a strike and management declared a "last, best, and final offer." Then, at what was functionally the eleventh hour, they reached a three-year deal and announced it from the stage at the opening concert, which is a very Symphony way to turn a labor crisis into a curtain-raiser.
Through all of this, the SF Symphony has been advancing plans to gut-renovate and expand Davies Symphony Hall, with a price tag estimated at $100 million and, by some accounts, potentially more than double that. They brought in Frank Gehry's firm alongside local architect Mark Cavagnero. The renderings are gorgeous: a glassier, more open ground floor, the ceremonial entrance repositioned to sit diagonally across from City Hall, a new recital hall, a media wall to broadcast concerts to the street, and a more intimate house with the seat count dropping from about 2,740 to roughly 2,100. This is for a building that hasn't had a serious refresh since its 1992 acoustic fix.
This is the house Chan inherits. Beautiful, world-class, recently bruised, and arguing with itself about what it can afford to be.
I have often jabbed SF Symphony for its attendees and their love of Patagonia vests and denim. It is, to my eyes, the most casual night out of the three major performance arts institutions in San Francisco. But amid all that is this complicated house of cards that is miraculously staying intact, amid the Symphony entering this new era. I look forward to watching it unfold and, of course, continuing to attend.
Saul Sugarman is editor-in-chief and owner of The Bold Italic.
Photos of Lunar New Year at SF Symphony and of the SF Ballet 2023 gala are by Drew Altizer Photography.
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Saul Sugarman
Saul Sugarman
Saul Sugarman
The last link describes a 2024 performance that paired a Cartier perfume maker and a light show. It was wild, at least as far as you can go to a symphony performance and then say, "It was wild." Lol.
I have also attended all three Lord of the Rings films and meant to write a preview of the latest. Mea culpa, SF Symphony. But send me an email; I'd still like to do a follow-up "SF Symphony at the movies" story.
Saul Sugarman
I'm also writing
I recently updated a map of BBQ grills in SF and their rental prices. This story from The Bold Italic in 2015 had been trending mildly on SEO because of San Francisco's recent warm weather. I've added a new map of spots in SF and updated the rental prices. I will likely spam readers soon with a fresh story on this same topic, in full.
The Bold Italic
And I reviewed The Devil Wears Prada 2 today. I swear I'm not a hater. But also, it was fine.
Saul Sugarman
