San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Collaboration meets experimentation: Symphony’s new leadership model
“San Francisco is a place of great openmindedness, of creative thinking,” says the San Francisco Symphony’s new Music Director EsaPekka Salonen. “The San Francisco Symphony has that same spirit. There is a deep musical understanding in this orchestra but there is also a culture of risk taking that is the spirit of San Francisco.”
Salonen has already tapped into this culture of risk taking by assembling an extraordinary group of eight Collaborative Partners from a variety of cultural disciplines to chart a new artistic leadership model unique in the orchestral world: composer/ pianist Nicholas Britell; classical vocalist/ curator Julia Bullock; flutist/ educator/ creator of new and experimental music Claire Chase; composer/ guitarist Bryce Dessner; violinist/ musical director/ artistic trailblazer Pekka Kuusisto; composer/ multifaceted collaborator Nico Muhly; artificial intelligence entrepreneur/ roboticist Carol Reiley; and jazz bassist/ vocalist/ undefinable artist esperanza spalding.
“I’ve never achieved anything on my own,” Salonen says. “Every achievement that I’m really proud of has been a result of collaboration. I’m looking to create a different kind of framework, and these wonderfully creative people in the team will help me in that process.”
Bullock is captivated by the possibilities of bringing multiple creative minds together to map the future: “Instead of just a few people contributing their voices to the repertoire that is being presented to audiences — or even just decisions coming from a few places — now, it’s coming from many people and places. It’s an exciting
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This collaborative process will get its first airing in the Symphony’s upcoming digital concert event Throughline: San Francisco Symphony — From Hall to Home, premiering November 14. The event features the world premiere of Muhly’s new work “Throughline,” commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony and created around and for the restrictions of COVID19.
“Throughline” finds inventive and meaningful ways to highlight small ensembles of San Francisco Symphony musicians and/ or Collaborative Partners ( filmed in locations worldwide) in its 13 interconnected sections. It’s an impressive feat of artistry and innovation and a fitting way to launch the music directorship of one of classical music’s most forwardthinking conductors.
While the coming together of artistic forces with varied perspectives will surely yield new and unexpected results, Muhly notes, “it didn’t hurt that a lot of the other collaborators are part of my musical family. What’s great about all the Collaborative Partners is that we all occupy our own worlds. And in a way, what this will allow the Symphony to do is to invite the audience to explore these really specific but also very generous musical communities.”
Chase shares that idea: “Music is community, making music is building community. I see a symphony orchestra as being the creative connective tissue between so many different forces that make up a city.”