SFCM Presents: Fall 2026 Performance Season Highlights

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music is proud to announce its performance schedule for the fall 2026 season, a forward-thinking and wide-ranging selection of live music moments drawn from canonical repertoire as much as the contemporary.

These events represent only a fraction of SFCM's performance offerings throughout the Fall 2027 semester. Be sure to bookmark our Performance Calendar for the entire range of our live presentations, including faculty-led concerts, studio recitals, live workshops, and masterclasses.

Orchestra 

Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5

Saturday, September 26 2026, 7:30 PM
 

For the Conservatory Orchestra's opening concert, Composition student Brayden Meng premieres his Highsmith Award-winning composition To Decipher Birdsong before first-year Conducting master's student Grace Wahlen takes the podium for Jennifer Higdon's Blue Cathedral. The program concludes with Sergei Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5, a piece so steeped in World War II that the premiere was delayed until the sounds of gunfire from Russia's crossing into Germany could no longer be heard in the concert hall.

Radu Paponiu Conducts SFCM's Concerto Competition Winners 

Saturday, October 3 2026, 7:30 PM
 

Radu Paponiu.

San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra Music Director Radu Paponiu, formerly of the Naples Philharmonic, guides three SFCM student competition winners through the concertos of their choice. Guitarist Kaz Hudson will be playing Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco's Guitar Concerto No. 1 in D Major, Op. 99; violinist Mark Chen plays Sergei Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major, Op. 19, and cellist Lekai Li closes the evening with William Walton's Cello Concerto.

Giancarlo Guerrero Conducts Bartók

Saturday, November 14 2026, 7:30 PM
 

Giancarlo Guerrero (Credit: Matthew Holler).

Six-time GRAMMY Award-winner Giancarlo Guerrero leads the SFCM Orchestra through Roberto Sierra's Sinfonía No. 4 and Béla Bartók's The Miraculous Mandarin, Op. 19, immediately banned after its 1926 Cologne premiere by the German town's mayor. Grace Wahlen conducts the SFCM premiere of Jimmy Lopez's Loud, and her fellow Conducting student Jason Gluck guides the Orchestra through Maurice Ravel's Shéhérazade, M.41, featuring mezzo-soprano Lanie Anthan, winner of the Conservatory's 2026 Voice Concerto Competition.

Opera & Musical Theatre

 Beyond the Aria with Craig Terry

Friday, September 25 2026, 7:30 PM
 

Craig Terry at SFCM.

GRAMMY-Award winning pianist, arranger, and Askonas Holt Artist Craig Terry returns to SFCM after the West Coast premiere of his Beyond the Aria series, which places contemporary songs alongside those from the classical repertoire. In 2025, this meant anything from from a mashup of "Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour" from Jacques Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann and Bill Withers' iconic hit "Just the Two of Us" to Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" performed as part of a medley sung by over two dozen students.

Giacomo Puccini's Suor Angelica with Louis Lohraseb

Thursday, November 19 and Friday, November 20, 2026, 7:30 PM
 

Louis Lohraseb.

A rarity in the opera world, Puccini's Suor Angelica is an all-female cast, showcased this year across two nights of a dual-cast production. Internationally acclaimed conductor Louis Lohraseb—an Opus 3 artist recognized for his longstanding relationship with Los Angeles Opera—leads both evenings.

Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods

Friday, December 11 and Saturday, December 12, 2026, 7:30 PM
 

Stephen Sondheim in 1972 (Credit: Bernard Gotfryd).

Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's musical exploration of the Brothers Grimm's classic fairytales, Into the Woods upset The Phantom of the Opera at the Tony Awards after its 1987 premiere, winning Best Score, Best Book, and Best Actress in a Musical for Joanna Gleason. The 2024 film adaptation, starring Meryl Streep as The Witch (originated by Bernadette Peters), grossed $213 million worldwide upon its release, and this year, a West End revival of Into the Woods won two prestigious Olivier Awards.
 

Chamber Music Tuesdays

SFS Principal Flute Yubeen Kim

Tuesday, October 13 2026, 7:30 PM
 

Yubeen Kim.

SFCM faculty (and Principal Flute of the San Francisco Symphony) Yubeen Kim puts on an evening of intimate chamber music capped by two of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's flute quartets. Jeein Kim, Section First Violin of the San Francisco Symphony, joins alongside SFCM students.

Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky and a Prize-Winning Premiere

Tuesday, November 17 2026, 7:30 PM
 

Dimitri Apatine and Hyeyeon Park.

Acclaimed cello and piano duo Dmitri Atapine and Hyeyeon Park anchor a diverse evening that features the world premiere of Yangfan Xu's Hoefer Prize-winning quartet for the Chinese pipa. Park will be joined by Helen Meng and Bonhwi Kim for an unforgettable performance of Alfred Schnittke's Hommage a Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, for one piano … and six hands.

London Philharmonic Award-Winning Violist Jordan Bak

Tuesday, December 8 2026, 7:30 PM
 

Jordan Bak.

Jamaican-American violist Jordan Bak, recipient of the London Philharmonic Orchestra's Alexandra Jupin Award (among other awards in the Sphinx, Lionel Tertis, and Concert Artists Guild competitions) displays his range in this unforgettable evening. Bak will perform as a soloist and half of a duo, as well as in trio, quartet, and quintet settings, ensuring everyone in the audience will be able to count to five by the end of the night.

Large Ensembles

The Baroque Mastery of Vivaldi, Handel, and Telemann

Sunday, October 11 2026, 2:00 PM
 

SFCM's Historical Performance Department Chair Corey Jamason.

SFCM's Baroque Orchestra, under the direction of Historical Performance Department Chair Corey Jamason presents an evening showcasing three masters of the era—Antonio Vivaldi, George Frideric Handel, and Georg Philipp Telemann—with orchestral and chamber ensembles.

Wind Ensemble: Caroline Shaw for Winds, a Flute Concerto, and More

Friday, October 23 2026, 7:30 PM
 

Under the direction of Brad Hogarth (above), SFCM's Wind Ensemble opens with an arrangement of contemporary composer Caroline Shaw's choral work and the swallow for winds before highlighting concerto competition winner Wanruo Zhang with Carl Reinecke's Concerto in D Major for Flute and Wind Band. Deciduous by Viet Cuong and Adam Schoenberg's GRAMMY-nominated work Picture Studies round out the evening.

 

Edwin Outwater Conducts the New Music Ensemble with Shara Nova

Friday, October 30 2026 at 7:00 and 9:00 PM
 

SFCM Music Director Edwin Outwater transforms SFCM's most exclusive space, the Osher Salon, into a black box-style theater—akin to his work in the San Francisco Symphony's Soundbox series—for two back-to-back performances. Vocalist Shara Nova of My Brightest Diamond, who has collaborated with David Byrne, Sufjan Stevens, David Lang of Bang on a Can (and many others), will close out the night with Sarah Kirkland Snider's five-movement Unremembered. David T. Little's Hellhound (described by WQXR as "blues studded with black metal"), György Kurtág's A kis csáva (The Little Fix), and Pulitzer Prize finalist Christopher Cerrone's The Night Mare fill out a seasonally appropriate "spooky" program.
 

Faculty Artist Series

Jeff Denson, Bay Area Jazz Bassist and Vocalist

 Sunday, September 13 2026, 2:00 PM
 

Jeff Denson.

Known equally for his singing and his electric and upright bass playing, Denson has a host of impressive credits to his name, including collaborations with Brian Blade, Joe Lovano, Chris Potter, Mike Stern, Terri Lyne Carrington, and legendary saxophonist Lee Konitz. 

San Francisco Ballet Orchestra Concertmaster Cordula Merks

Monday, October 5 2026, 7:30 PM
 

Cordula Merks.

Merks' Tomadachi Quartet—Mayumi Wyrick (violin), Amy Hiraga (viola), and Peter Wyrick (cello)—bring a high concentration of San Francisco talent to the Conservatory, with decades of experience across the Symphony and Ballet Orchestra among them. Their eclectic program comfortably seats contemporary composer Caroline Shaw alongside George Gershwin and stalwarts like Leoš Janáček and Antonín Dvořák.

 

The SFJAZZ Collective's Warren Wolf

Monday, October 12 2026, 7:30 PM
 

Warren Wolf.

Warren Wolf's dazzling virtuosity isn't limited to the vibraphone: He's equally at home behind a drum set or at the piano bench. It's this expansive musicality that's made him an internationally recognized touring artist with famed bassist Christian McBride's band Inside Straight (among many others) and a cornerstone of the SFJAZZ Collective, the institution's in-house band. 
 

A Tribute to Benjamin Britten with Theo Popov and Robert Mollicone

Monday, November 16 2026, 7:30 PM
 

Theo Popov and Robert Mollicone.

Popov is joined by pianist Robert Mollicone for an evening paying tribute to iconic British composer Benjamin Britten. Mollicone performs a selection of Britten songs with tenor Will Ferguson and baritone Michael Kelly before the second half of the program premieres Popov and librettist Mark Campbell's A Thousand Gleaming Fires. The seven-song cycle frames a contemporary gay couple's relationship through the correspondence between Benjamin Britten and tenor Peter Pears, collected in the book My Beloved One.

SFS Principal Violist Jonathan Vinocour
Monday, December 7 2026, 7:30 PM
 

Jonathan Vinocour.

Previously Principal Viola of the St. Louis Symphony and guest principal of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and Chicago Symphony, Vinocour has been Principal Viola with the San Francisco Symphony since 2009. A student of legendary viola pedagogue Kim Kashkashian, Vinocour plays a 1784 Lorenzo Storioni viola on loan from the SF Symphony.
 

Roots, Jazz, and American Music

Side-by-Side Concert @ SFJAZZ: Celebrating John Coltrane

Thursday, October 22 2026, 7:30 PM

Roots, Jazz, and American Music students perform at SFJAZZ.

Celebrating tenor saxophone legend's centennial year, SFJAZZ hosts students and faculty from the Conservatory in the venue's Joe Henderson Lab. The Roots, Jazz, and American Music (RJAM) Department's side-by-side concerts pair faculty members with student combos for concert experiences that blend real-world performance training with the individualized mentorship so intrinsic to learning jazz.

Side-by-Side Concert @ SFCM

Thursday, November 12 2026, 7:30 PM
 

The second faculty-and-student side-by-side performance of the fall semester, held in SFCM's Barbro Osher Recital Hall with its stunning 11th-floor views of Van Ness Avenue headed north and the west side of San Francisco.

SFJAZZ's Rebeca Mauleón Leads the SFCM Latin Jazz Ensemble

Monday, December 7 2026, 7:30 PM
 

Rebeca Mauleón.

Director of Education & Community Engagement at SFJAZZ, Mauleón is an internationally renowned educator and musician specializing in Afro-Caribbean and Latin music. She's collaborated with musical icons like Tito Puente, Carlos Santana, and Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart, and her connections have brought legends like Chucho Valdés to SFCM to play with students.

Visit SFCM's Performance Calendar for a complete listing of events happening at the Conservatory, or learn more about studying at SFCM.