The San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas Announce 2012-13 Season

The San Francisco Symphony (SFS) and Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas (MTT) today announced their 2012-13 season concert programs and events, outlining an eleven-month season marked by signature concerts and staged productions.

In his 18th season as Music Director, MTT leads the Orchestra in 17 weeks of programs in San Francisco and on tour in Asia and the US. Highlights include explorations of music by Stravinsky and Beethoven, tracing both composers’ early musical influences and ideas from rarely performed pieces forward through their later, well-known works. MTT will create original, staged concert productions around Grieg’s Peer Gynt and Beethoven’s Missa solemnis with video elements, and lead the first-ever concert performances by an orchestra of Bernstein’s complete music for West Side Story. The Orchestra premieres new work by contemporary composers, including performances of new commissions by Jörg Widmann, Robin Holloway, and Samuel Carl Adams, and the world premiere of a work by SFS Assistant Concertmaster Mark Volkert.

On its SFS Media label, the Orchestra releases recordings from its Centennial Season performances of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and works from the American Mavericks Festival by Henry Cowell, Carl Ruggles, and Lou Harrison. Absolute Jest by John Adams will be recorded live in concert for release on SFS Media. Soprano Renée Fleming and pianist András Schiff are this season’s Project San Francisco resident artists, with Schiff beginning a two-year exploration of the keyboard works of Bach. The SFS continues tobroaden access to music to a wider community, expanding its Community of Music Makers amateur workshops and instrument training and support programs for young people.

Subscription ticket packages for the San Francisco Symphony’s 2012-13 season are on sale now to renewing subscribers and the general public. Ticket information is available through the San Francisco Symphony Web site at www.sfsymphony.org, through the SFS Patron Services Office at 415-864-6000,and at the Davies Symphony Hall box office, on Grove Street between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street in San Francisco. Single tickets for individual concerts will go on sale on July 23.

“The artistic partnership of Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony continues to set the standard for music making of the highest level,” said Brent Assink, SFS Executive Director. “As we begin our second century, our vision is defined by our community’s abiding love of music. We offer a commitment to new music as well as to creating new ways of connecting with the core traditions of orchestral music. We continue to provide new ways for listeners to join us and make meaningful connections with our music, be it through impassioned performances in the concert hall, leading-edge media projects, or music in our schools and our community.”

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