Esa-Pekka Salonen is known as both a composer and conductor. He is the Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony, where he works alongside eight Collaborative Partners from a variety of disciplines, ranging from composers to roboticists. He is the Conductor Laureate of the Philharmonia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. As a member of the faculty of the Colburn School, he directs the pre-professional Negaunee Conducting Program. Salonen co-founded, and until 2018 served as the Artistic Director of, the annual Baltic Sea Festival.
 
Highlights from Esa-Pekka Salonen’s 2023–24 San Francisco Symphony season include world premieres from Jesper Nordin, Anders Hillborg, and Jens Ibsen; projects by Collaborative Partners Pekka Kuusisto and Carol Reiley; the launch of the inaugural California Festival; a tour of California; and a program of Ravel and Schoenberg featuring choreography by Alonzo King and staging by Peter Sellars.
 
Salonen also conducts many of his own compositions around the world this season. Among them are Tiu, a new work commemorating the 20th anniversary of Walt Disney Concert Hall, premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic; Karawane, also with the Los Angeles Philharmonic; Salonen’s Sinfonia Concertante for Organ and Orchestra with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Philadelphia Orchestra; and kínēma with the San Francisco Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestra.
 
Salonen has an extensive and varied recording career. Releases with the San Francisco Symphony include recordings of Bartók’s piano concertos, as well as spatial audio recordings of several Ligeti compositions. Other recent recordings include Strauss’s Four Last Songs, Bartók’s Miraculous Mandarin and Dance Suite, and a 2018 box set of his complete Sony recordings. His compositions appear on releases from Sony, Deutsche Grammophon, and Decca; his Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto, and Cello Concerto all appear on recordings he conducted himself.

This season, Heidi Stober debuts at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, singing Gretel in Hansel und Gretel. She also appears at the Deutsche Oper Berlin as Zdenka in Arabella and as Pat Nixon in Nixon in China; at Semperoper Dresden as Pamina in Die Zauberflöte; and in the title role of Thea Musgrave’s Mary, Queen of Scots with English National Opera. In concert, she performs Mozart’s Requiem with the Musikkollegium Winterthur in Switzerland, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and gives recitals at the Oxford International Song Festival, New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, and with the Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago.  

Stober’s operatic highlights include a long relationship with the Deutsche Oper Berlin, as well as multiple roles at the Metropolitan Opera and San Francisco Opera, where she most recently appeared as Blanche de la Force in Dialogues of the Carmelites and was a soloist at the 100th Anniversary Concert. She has also appeared with Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Opera Philadelphia, Hamburg State Opera, Vienna State Opera, and Dutch National Opera, among other companies. In concert, she has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Houston Symphony, Berlin Radio Symphony, and Grand Teton Music Festival. She made her San Francisco Symphony debut on New Year’s Eve 2012 and returns next December for Handel’s Messiah.

Originally from Waukesha, Wisconsin, Stober attended Lawrence University and New England Conservatory. She continued her professional training as a member of the Houston Grand Opera Studio and now resides in Berlin.

Two-time Grammy Award–winning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke has sung at the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, English National Opera, Seattle Opera, Opéra National de Bordeaux, and Gran Teatre del Liceu, among others, and with more than 80 symphony orchestras worldwide.

This season, Cooke debuts at La Monnaie as Emilie Ekdahl in the world premiere of Fanny and Alexander, sings Marguerite in La Damnation de Faust at the Bard Music Festival, appears as Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde at the Gstaad Festival, and returns to Houston Grand Opera as Venus in Tannhäuser. On the concert stage, she joins the Vienna Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Vienna Radio Symphony, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Cologne Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, London Philharmonia, Oslo Philharmonic, and Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.

Cooke first appeared under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas as a Shenson Young Artist in January 2010, following her SF Symphony debut the previous year. She also toured Europe with MTT and the Symphony singing Mahler’s Third Symphony.

Cooke premiered MTT’s Meditations on Rilke, captured on a Grammy-winning SFS Media release, and recorded two of MTT’s songs on Grace: The Music of Michael Tilson Thomas.

A native of Hong Kong, Jenny Wong is Chorus Director of the San Francisco Symphony and associate artistic director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Her conducting engagements have included the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella Series, Los Angeles Opera Orchestra, Pasadena Symphony and Pops, the Industry, Long Beach Opera, Phoenix Chorale, and Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles. In 2021, Wong was one of nine national recipients of Opera America’s inaugural Opera Grants for Women Stage Directors and Conductors.

As Chorus Director, Wong has worked with SF Symphony Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen and Music Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas, as well as numerous guest conductors. She has also prepared choruses for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony, working with conductors Gustavo Dudamel, Susanna Mälkki, Jonathan Cohen, and Osmo Vänskä, among many others. Wong led the SF Symphony Chorus for the Deutsche Grammophon recording of Kaija Sariaaho’s Adriana Mater, which won the 2025 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording, and helped prepare the Los Angeles Master Chorale for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, which won the 2022 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance. Together with Grant Gershon and the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Wong was also awarded the 2022 American Prize in Choral Performance in the Professional Division.