San Francisco Symphony Reveals November 2026 Programming

The San Francisco Symphony’s November programming lineup will feature three Orchestral Series programs exploring works inspired by storytelling, myth, faith, and nature, led by guest conductors Fabien Gabel, James Gaffigan, and Marie Jacquot in her Orchestral Series debut; a special collaboration with Alonzo King LINES Ballet for two world-premiere performances; the SF Symphony’s 19th annual Día de los Muertos program; a solo piano recital with Hélène Grimaud; and a chamber performance with violinist Hilary Hahn, baritone Matthias Goerne, and pianist Gloria Chien featuring a new work by Reena Esmail. The month also includes live-to-picture film series performances of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas and Hook, the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra’s season-opening performance with Wattis Foundation Music Director Radu Paponiu, and chamber music concerts at Davies Symphony Hall and the Gunn Theater at the Legion of Honor.

November 19–21: Alonzo King LINES Ballet and Appalachian Spring

November 19-21, the San Francisco Symphony and conductor James Gaffigan (music director designate of Houston Grand Opera and general music director of Komische Oper Berlin) are joined by San Francisco-based dance company Alonzo King LINES Ballet for two world premiere performances set to orchestral favorites—Claude Debussy’s symphonic poem Prélude à L’Après-midi d’un faune (Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun) and the suite from Aaron Copland’s quintessentially American ballet Appalachian Spring, choreographed by LINES Artistic Director Alonzo King. This is the Orchestra’s fifth collaboration with Alonzo King LINES Ballet since 2020 and their third mainstage performance with the Symphony since the Symphony’s Re-Opening Night concert in 2021. “Returning to collaborate with the San Francisco Symphony feels both like a homecoming and an evolution of a shared artistic language,” said Alonzo King. “Creating world premiere works with these extraordinary artists—reimagining the expansive Americana of Copland’s Appalachian Spring and the evocative, impressionistic textures of Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun—is an invitation to explore how movement and sound breathe together in real time. When dancers and musicians meet in this way, something larger than either form emerges: a living architecture of emotion, memory, and the human spirit.”

The concert program also includes Sergei Prokofiev’s Sinfonia concertante, featuring Principal Cello Rainer Eudeikis (Philip S. Boone Chair) as soloist. “Prokofiev’s Sinfonia concertante might well be the most demanding and energetic cello concerto in the repertoire,” said Eudeikis. “It has everything: technique-bending virtuosity, melodies that move you, and masterful writing that showcases the soloist and the orchestra. For me, it’s a musical Mount Everest that I'm thrilled to climb alongside my colleagues in the San Francisco Symphony.” This marks Eudeikis’s second solo concerto appearance with the Orchestra, following his performances of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Cello Concerto in October 2024. The performance was released on SFS Media as a live concert recording in August 2025.

November 6 & 8: Isabel Leonard Sings Ravel

Fabien Gabel, chief conductor of the Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich, conducts Vincent d’Indy’s vivid Istar, derived from a Babylonian myth about the goddess of love and fertility. Mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard joins Gabel and the Orchestra to perform Maurice Ravel’s Shéhérazade, a colorful work based on three poems by Tristan Klingsor. Gabel also conducts Leonard in the first SF Symphony performances of Claude Debussy and André Caplet’s orchestration of the evocative “Le jet d’eau” from Debussy’s song cycle Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire. The program closes with the first SF Symphony performances of Richard Strauss’s Symphonic Fantasy on Die Frau ohne Schatten, based on his earlier opera about an empress who lacks both shadow and soul.

November 13–15: Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet

Marie Jacquot, chief conductor of the Royal Danish Theatre Copenhagen and chief conductor of the WDR Symphony Orchestra, makes her Orchestral Series debut conducting the first SF Symphony performances of Augusta Holmès’s Andromède, a symphonic poem based on the Greek myth of the daughter of Cassiopeia. Sayaka Shoji performs Ottorino Respighi’s expressive Concerto gregoriano, inspired by the music of early Christianity. The program also includes selections from Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, which depicts the fierce war of the Montagues and Capulets, set in contrast to the affair of the two titular star-crossed lovers.

November 7: Día de los Muertos

José Luis Gómez, music director of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, conducts the San Francisco Symphony’s 19th annual Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebration, featuring music by Carlos Chávez, Evencio Castellanos Yumar, Arturo Márquez, and José Pablo Moncayo García. Violinist Francisco Fullana joins the Symphony to perform Márquez’s “Folia Tropical” from Fandango for Violin and Orchestra; salterio players David Hernández Pozos and Claudio Israel Vázquez perform the world premiere of Luis Farfán Carrillo’s El Baile de la Catrina; and dancers from Casa Círculo Cultural are featured throughout the concert.

Every year leading up to the Symphony’s Day of the Dead celebration, the lobbies of Davies Symphony Hall are transformed with immersive art installations and altars built by local artists to honor the living and the deceased. Curated by longtime SF Symphony collaborator Martha Rodríguez-Salazar, this year’s celebration is dedicated to the Mexican state of Tlaxcala, a land of deep ancestral roots, extraordinary cultural richness, and a worldview in which life and death remain in constant dialogue. The event includes preconcert activities for families, including live catrinas and interactive altars.

November 10: Hélène Grimaud Piano Recital

Pianist Hélène Grimaud plays a solo recital titled “The Last Testament,” bringing together the last piano sonatas by Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert—Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in C minor, Opus 111 and Schubert’s Piano Sonata in B-flat major, D.960. Grimaud most recently appeared with the SF Symphony in September 2025, performing George Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F.

November 30: Hilary Hahn/Matthias Goerne/Gloria Chien Trio

Violinist Hilary Hahn joins forces with baritone Matthias Goerne and pianist Gloria Chien for a trio performance. The concert kicks off with Hahn and Chien performing Ludwig van Beethoven’s Violin Sonata in F major, Opus 24, Spring, followed by Chien and Goerne performing four additional vocal works by Beethoven: “Adelaide,” “Mailied,” “Der Liebende,” and the pioneering song cycle An die ferne Geliebte. Hahn and baritone Goerne then perform Wir, a new SF Symphony co-commissioned work by Reena Esmail that weaves together the German poetry of Paul Celan with interstitial verse by Rebecca Gayle Howell and explores the fervent search for silence in our modern world. The program closes with the trio playing Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Hier in meines Vaters Stätte” from Cantata No. 32, Liebster Jesu, mein Verlangen, and “Welt, ade, ich bin dein müde” from Cantata No. 158, Der Friede sei mit dir.

November 24: Disney Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas in Concert Live-to-Film

Sarah Hicks conducts Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas live-to-picture with the San Francisco Symphony, featuring a Golden Globe-nominated score by Danny Elfman. Bored with the same old scare-and-scream routine, Pumpkin King Jack Skellington longs to spread the joy of Christmas. But his merry mission puts Santa in jeopardy and creates a nightmare for good little boys and girls everywhere.

November 27–28: Hook—Film with Live Orchestra

Sarah Hicks leads the Orchestra in Steven Spielberg’s Hook live-to-picture, featuring a Grammy-nominated score by John Williams. Starring Robin Williams as an adult Peter Pan—now Peter Banning, a workaholic lawyer who has forgotten his past life in Neverland—the film follows his daring return to rescue his children from Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman) and rediscover the magic of who he truly is.

November 22: San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra: Brahms 4

Wattis Foundation Music Director Radu Paponiu conducts the first San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra concert of the 2026–27 season. The program features Michael Tilson Thomas’s Agnegram, Zoltán Kodály’s Dances of Galánta, and Johannes Brahms’s Symphony No. 4. Comprised of more than 100 musicians ranging in age from 12 to 21 and representing communities from throughout the Bay Area, the SFSYO is recognized internationally as one of the finest youth orchestras in the world. The Youth Orchestra provides a tuition-free orchestral experience of preprofessional caliber to talented young Bay Area musicians. SFSYO members benefit from weekly rehearsals led by Paponiu and coachings with San Francisco Symphony musicians, and have the opportunity to work with world-renowned artists and conductors performing with the San Francisco Symphony.

November 1: Chamber Music at Davies Symphony Hall: Andrès, Strauss, and Brahms

In this chamber music concert, San Francisco Symphony musicians perform Bernard Andrès’s Chants d'arrière-saison for harp and bassoon, a string sextet version of Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen, and Johannes Brahms’s Clarinet Trio.

November 1: Chamber Music at Gunn Theater at Legion of Honor: Mozart, Bridge, and Saint-Saëns