The San Francisco Bay Area has no shortage of hidden treasures, and SFCM’s 2025 Winter Term is showcasing enough of them to last a lifetime.

The school’s annual Winter Term is a chance for students to explore areas outside of their usual academic work: Returning favorites include Wine and Music Pairing, as well the Guitar Department’s Harris Guitar Collection Recording Project, which gives students the opportunity to record on priceless historic guitars in the school’s collection. Launched in the 2015-2016 school year, Winter Term has expanded each year: In total, this year's edition offers 46 different options for students to immerse themselves in subjects beyond the standard curriculum for two weeks.

Dr. Nikolaus Hohmann.

This year there’s also a trio of classes that encourage students to engage with the city they call home in a variety of ways. Humanities and Sciences Chair Dr. Nikolaus Hohmann is leading an art history treasure hunt at SF’s de Young Museum in the city’s iconic Golden Gate Park; Opera and Musical Theatre Chair Heather Mathews is leading three days of hiking in the Marin Headlands and Angel Island to encourage vocal students to think of nontraditional approaches to breath training, and Professional Development professor Thomas Kurtz is guiding students on a queer music history tour of San Francisco’s famed Castro neighborhood.

“The Art History Treasure Hunt rotates through the three major museums of San Francisco to give students the opportunity to explore these major centers of culture, as well as to see how museums originate, curate, and evolve,” Hohmann says. “This Winter our Treasure Hunt takes us to the DeYoung Museum, where we will be immediately transported to Oceania and Africa and their rich traditions—a drum to summon spirit voices, for example, and ritual vessels with supernatural powers—and then marvel at the striking images by one of today’s foremost African artists, Leila Babirye. Next we’ll hunt for secrets in exquisite Mayan sculptures and admire whimsical Native American art of the past and of the present.”

The de Young Museum (Credit: Michael Layefsky)

From there, Hohmann says, the trek will move on to focus on American artists like Winslow Homer and Albert Bierstadt, Frederick Remington and Douglas Tilden and then to more contemporary art like the whimsical glassworks of Dale Chihuly and modern lodestars like Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell, before concluding in rooms dedicated to currently working artists.

“These Treasure Hunts allow students to experience the wonder and magic of museums,” Hohmann concludes, “thrilling us with treasures of great beauty, challenging us with provocative images, giving us new perspectives on old themes, and encountering entirely new ways of portraying the dilemmas, the pain, and the joy of what it means to be human. (SFCM students are of course entitled to the de Young’s student discount, which brings the cost of admission down nearly 50 percent.)

SFCM students hiking along the coastline.

As any Bay Area resident knows, the region offers some of the best hiking in the entire country. Mathews’ project seeks to show students how engaging with nature this way can enhance students’ musical lives as well. "Singing requires stamina, coordination and good breath support," Mathews says, all of which can be built up by hiking."

“San Francisco is a city with a fervent reputation for championing LGBTQIA+ rights,” Kurtz (pictured at right) says of his project. “Music has literally and figuratively served as a voice for social change among the LGBTQIA+ community.” He adds that students have often expressed an eagerness for historical, cultural, and sociopolitical readings of art and activism, and so “as students learn to understand the relationship between identity, activism, history, and music, they simultaneously hone their critical skills to think about music as a cultural force that has played many powerful and diverse roles in society.” The two-day tour will focus on some of the most historic queer spaces in the Castro, like the GLBT Historical Society, the SF AIDS Foundation, and the Family Link.

Of course, there are equally exciting projects this year that land a little closer to home. Soprano Patricia Racette returns to SFCM after her triumphant staging of Gian-Carlo Menotti’s The Consul in 2023 for a 10-day seminar and performance focusing on how students can develop their repertoire across multiple genres. Racette, who studied jazz as an undergraduate and also works as a director, is a perfect example of the SFCM Voice Department’s expanded multi-genre performance curriculum, with longstanding ties to not just the Conservatory, but the San Francisco Opera’s Merola and Adler Fellowship programs. Racette is also an Opus 3 Artist, with her visit linked to SFCM’s growing alliance with Opus 3, Askonas Holt and Pentatone Records.

Learn more about Winter Term at SFCM.