Commencement
Julie Barwick '15, Jessie Nucho '15, and Marko Bajzer '15
2023 Commencent Ceremony
Friday, May 19, 2023, 5:30 PM PST
Herbst Theatre
Located in: San Francisco War Memorial & Performing Arts Center
Address: 401 Van Ness Ave, San Francisco, CA 94102
In-person Tickets will be made available to Graduates for their friends and families. This year's commencement will also be livestreamed at the below link:
Additional Commencement Week Events are planned to recognize the Graduating Class of 2023 and to celebrate with their familes. All relevent commencement activity information and details will be shared directly with the students graduating, and friend and family members should reach out to their graduate for all pertinent information.
2023 Commencement Speaker
Composer JAKE HEGGIE is best known for the operas Dead Man Walking, Moby-Dick, It’s A Wonderful Life, Three Decembers, Two Remain and If I Were You. He is currently at work on his 10th full-length opera, Intelligence, with Jawole Zollar and Gene Scheer, as well as new works for violinist Joshua Bell, New Century Chamber Orchestra, the Miró Quartet, and Music of Remembrance. The operas and his nearly 300 art songs have been performed extensively on five continents, championed by some of the world’s most beloved artists. With a libretto by the late Terrence McNally, Dead Man Walking has become “the most celebrated American opera of the 21st century” (Chicago Tribune). It has received nearly 80 international productions since its San Francisco Opera premiere in 2000. The Metropolitan Opera has announced productions of Dead Man Walking and Moby-Dick for upcoming seasons. Recent premieres have included Lake Tahoe: Symphonic Reflections and Fantasy Suite 1803. In 2021, Heggie and mezzo Jamie Barton premiered the new song cycle What I Miss the Most… featuring new texts by Joyce DiDonato, Patti LuPone, Sister Helen Prejean, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Kathleen Kelly. Jamie Barton is also featured on Unexpected Shadows, a recording of Heggie’s songs released by Pentatone (2022 Grammy nominee). Songs for Murdered Sisters, a cycle to poetry by Margaret Atwood for baritone Joshua Hopkins, was commissioned by Houston Grand Opera and premiered in a film by director James Niebuhr (2022 Canadian Juno Award nominee). Intonations: Songs from the Violins of Hope (texts by Gene Scheer), was composed for mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and violinist Daniel Hope to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz (Pentatone). “Arguably the world’s most popular 21st-century opera and art song composer” (The Wall Street Journal). Jake Heggie lives in San Francisco with his husband, Curt Branom. www.jakeheggie.com