New SF Symphony Music Director Elim Chan Given Effusive Welcome at First Concert Since Being Hired

Though she won’t officially start her tenure as SF Symphony Music Director until next year, Elim Chan conducted her first two concerts at Davies Symphony Hall over the weekend in her capacity as Music Director Designate.

The search lights were out, the bars were stocked with Hendrick’s gin and plenty of wine, and the block of Grove Street outside Davies Symphony Hall was closed down for a fairly lavish party Friday night to welcome newly named SF Symphony Music Director Elim Chan.

As we reported three weeks ago, Chan is set to be the first-ever female music director of the orchestra, and her hiring marks a new era for the San Francisco Symphony, which will be led by an up-and-coming star of the classical music world who is not yet 40 years old.

Chan took the stage Friday wearing an embroidered black coat over a black tulle skirt, and animatedly conducted a program she said she had selected for its aquatic themes. The evening began with Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, which was followed by Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été — a seven-part song cycle which was sung by mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, in what Chan described as a “bucket list” collaboration.

The two women gave each other mututal honors, with Cooke singing a brief encore composed by the late Michael Tilson Thomas, based on the Rilke poem Widening Circle. Before the encore, Cooke said that when she last sang the Berlioz piece on that stage, Thomas had leaned down and kissed the hem of Cooke’s skirt, so she returned the gesture by kissing Chan’s skirt.

The program’s second half was the melodically complex and wistful La Mer by Debussy, whom Chan described as one of her favorite composers. The piece, which is filled with crescendoing waves and the sounds of both a roiling ocean and tranquil seas, as well as sounds that conjure seabirds and other creatures of the water, is a workout for all sections of the orchestra, but in particular the woodwind and brass sections.

In a gesture that is perhaps telling of her generous spirit, Chan, when she was handed a massive bouquet of flowers at the conclusion of the piece, pulled out a particularly large pink flower to give to the first-chair violinist, and proceeded to pull out stems to hand each of the section leaders.

“I’m definitely feeling a lot of love,” Chan said to the audience earlier in the night, not long after she was greeted with a standing ovation when she first took to the stage.

The celebration continued at the reception outside, with a jazz quartet playing at one end of the street, and Latin jazz ensemble playing at the other. Food stations doled out warm pretzels covered in cheese sauce, empanadas, popcorn, spring rolls, and doughnuts, and symphony fans huddled in groups to discuss what they’d heard and seen.

As Chronicle critic Joshua Kosman wrote of Chan in a review of a past performance as guest conductor, “Chan … projects a degree of physical authority from the podium that is rare to witness.” And her passion was well on display Friday, particularly as she led the orchestra in the Debussy piece, which she clearly loves.

Chan will return to Davies in late October, conducting a program anchored by Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, and Bay Area composer John Adams’s Doctor Atomic Symphony — a condensed instrumental version of his 2005 opera about the Nuclear Age. The latter will be a debut for the SF Symphony, and the program will also include another debut, Magnificat by contemporary Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.

Her official tenure as Music Director will begin in September 2027.

Previously: SF Symphony Names Its First-Ever Female Music Director, Elim Chan