Sutton Foster and Kelli O'Hara to Headline SF Symphony’s Summer with the Symphony Programs
Sarah Hicks conducts Leonard Bernstein’s score to the 1961 film West Side Story live with the San Francisco Symphony, plus more.
The San Francisco Symphony has revealed four upcoming performances as part of the 2026 Summer with the Symphony season.
Mendelssohn & Bruch
On July 1, Chloé Van Soeterstède leads the Orchestra in the first San Francisco Symphony performance of Concert Overture in D major by Elfrida Andrée, who was not only a composer but also an activist who fought for gender equality in her home country of Sweden. Paul Huang performs Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1, which the composer dedicated to violinist Joseph Joachim, who not only helped revise the concerto, but also performed the premiere in 1868. The program closes with Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 5 in D major, Opus 107, Reformation, written for the 300th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession, a major document of the Protestant Reformation.
A.R. Rahman
On July 2, Grammy and Academy Award-winning composer A.R. Rahman joins the SF Symphony to bring his genre-spanning compositions—ranging from Eastern classical, pop, world music, and rap—to astonishing new levels. From Bollywood to Hollywood, Rahman is one of the world’s most prolific film composers, and the musical mastermind behind Slumdog Millionaire’s award-winning score.
West Side Story
On July 9–10, Sarah Hicks conducts Leonard Bernstein’s score to the 1961 film West Side Story live with the San Francisco Symphony, while the remastered film is shown in high definition on the big screen with the original vocals and dialogue intact. The 10-time Academy Award-winning romantic tragedy was directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins and featured Robbins’ choreography, a screenplay by Ernest Lehman, a book by Arthur Laurents, and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.
Sutton Foster & Kelli O’Hara
On July 18, Tony Award-winning performers Sutton Foster and Kelli O’Hara join the San Francisco Symphony for a special tribute to Broadway and beyond, inspired by the 1962 CBS special “Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall.” With conductor Michael Rafter and pianist Dan Lipton, Foster and O’Hara pay homage to icons of stage and screen Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett by performing favorites from their Tony Award-winning and nominated shows and telling stories in between.
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