With support from the California Arts Council, during the 2020-21 school year, teaching artists in SF Symphony’s
Music and Mentors program will provide 1,550 hours of instrumental instructions to 45 ensembles (orchestras, mariachi, jazz and modern bands) in the City’s public middle and high schools. This program will help young instrumentalists to develop new musical skills, gain personal confidence, experience a strong sense of community, and build a life-long appreciation for music.
SFS is among the most adventurous and innovative performing arts institutions in the U.S. Celebrated at home and abroad for its artistic excellence, creative performance concepts, and award-winning recordings, SFS is led by Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen, an artist at the forefront of re-imagining orchestral music for 21st-century audiences. Home season and tour concerts in the US and abroad are currently attracting in-person audiences of over 310,000.
SFS brings free, standard-setting music education programs to the public of San Francisco. Among the most extensive offered by any American orchestra today, they provide a cross-disciplinary music curriculum to every elementary school, and instrumental instruction and coaching to every middle and high school ensemble program, serving 23,000 young people annually.
SFS Media is the Symphony’s award-winning production company whose concert recordings have been honored by France’s Grand Prix du Disque, Britain’s Gramophone Award, as well as multiple Grammy, Emmy, and Peabody awards. Radio broadcasts of SFS concerts continue to air weekly, as they have since 1926, on local and national FM stations and their affiliates abroad.