Inside Music Talks
Join us at Davies Symphony Hall and Flint Center one hour before each DSH, Open Rehearsal, and Flint Center subscription concerts for a free pre-concert talk.
Inside Music Pre-Concert Talks
Inside Music Talks are designed to enhance your enjoyment of the concert by providing insights into the works on the program—bringing you “inside” the music. Our roster of speakers includes a variety of music professionals who will bring different viewpoints and approaches to their conversations about the music. Some of the approaches might include: exploring why a composer wrote a particular work, examining the social and historical context of a piece of music, looking at how a piece of music is constructed, and guided listening through recorded excerpts of the works being performed.
Inside Music Pre-concert Talks are offered free to all concertgoers. (Exceptions are Friday 6.5 concerts, concerts the week of June 11, 2008, and Flint Center concerts of Dec 12, 2007 and July 9, 2008).
Speaker Biographies
James Gaffigan joined the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) as Associate Conductor in the fall of 2006. He is the first SFS conductor to be appointed to that position and as such will lead the orchestra in numerous concerts during the season, including subscription weeks, and all classical Summer in the City series concerts. He assists SFS Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas during his Davies Symphony Hall conducting weeks, national and international tours, and with SFS recording and multimedia projects. Previously the Assistant Conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra from 2003-2006, Mr. Gaffigan assisted Music Director Franz Welser-Möst there, conducted numerous subscription concerts and served as Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra. He has guest conducted the New World, Indianapolis, and Fort Worth symphonies, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Rochester Philharmonic and the Tonhalle Orchestra in Zurich. Mr. Gaffigan’s engagements in the 2006/07 season include debuts with the Deustche Sinfonie-Orchester Berlin and the Columbus Symphony, as well as guest conducting the New York Philharmonic and the Leipzig Radio MDR Orchestra. He is the Music Director of CityMusic Cleveland, a chamber orchestra which presents free concerts throughout the city.
Ronald Gallman, the San Francisco Symphony’s Director of Education Programs, is a musicologist and educator who has written and lectured extensively on symphonic repertoire, chamber music, and opera. Gallman manages the San Francisco Symphony’s “Inside Music” talks and oversees the SFS’s extensive slate of education initiatives.
Peter Grunberg served as Head of Music Staff at San Francisco Opera from 1992 to 1999 and is currently Musical Assistant to Michael Tilson Thomas. He has appeared as piano soloist with the San Francisco Symphony, has performed at the Aix-en-Provence and Salzburg festivals, and has collaborated in recital with such artists as Frederica von Stade, Thomas Hampson, and Joshua Bell. He has also conducted at the Moscow Conservatory, Grand Théâtre de Genève, and the Pacific Music Festival. In 2003 he played and spoke at the “Visual Sounds” symposium at SF MOMA, part of the SFS’s festival on Wagner, Weill, and the Weimar Republic.
James M. Keller has been the San Francisco Symphony’s program annotator since 2000, and has contributed notes to the SFS program book since 1996. He is also program annotator for the New York Philharmonic. In 1999, he was honored with the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for Music Journalism. His many articles include contributions to two new books: George Crumb and the Alchemy of Sound (Colorado College Music Press, 2005) and Nouveaux regards sur Vincent d'Indy (Éditions Symétrie, Lyon, 2006).
Susan Key is a musicologist specializing in American music. She has taught at the University of Maryland, the College of William and Mary, and Stanford University. A co-editor (with Larry Rothe) of American Mavericks: Musical Visionaries, Pioneers, Iconoclasts, published by University of California Press, she has also published articles on Stephen Foster, John Cage, and American music on early radio. Ms. Key currently manages the education component of Keeping Score: MTT on Music, the Symphony’s multimedia program to connect listeners with music and the emotions it conveys.
John R. Palmer completed his Ph.D. at UC Davis and has taught courses on the music of Wagner, Beethoven, Mahler, and Verdi, as well as on popular music, cultural history, and writing. Dr. Palmer studied at the University of Vienna as the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship. He currently teaches at University of San Francisco and tutors high school students.
Laura Stanfield Prichard is a conductor, musicologist, and vocalist specializing in choral music and modernism. She taught music and dance at California State University-East Bay (Hayward) and San Francisco State University for eight years, and has presented lectures at the San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Opera, and New Century Chamber Orchestra since 1996. She is a faculty member and staff conductor for the Berkshire Choral Festival and from 2003-2006, directed the award-winning Sängerchor Boston, the oldest German-language choir in the US. In August 2005, Ms. Prichard led the Boston-based Sharing a New Song Chorus on a concert tour of South Africa, and toured with them in Vietnam in April 2006. She directs the music program at the First Parish UU Church in Arlington, MA, which has led significant relief efforts and reconstruction trips to the UU churches of New Orleans. An alumna of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, she performs regularly with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Benjamin Shwartz is Resident Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony and Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and conducting fellow with the New World Symphony, in 2003 he founded the Philadelphia Sinfonietta, an ensemble that presented world premieres at every concert. Prior to his appointment with the SFS, Benjamin Shwartz was Assistant Conductor of the Delaware Symphony and the Reading Symphony in Pennsylvania, conducting family, education, and pops concerts for both orchestras.
Michael Steinberg, a contributing writer to the San Francisco Symphony's program book, served as SFS Program Annotator for twenty years. He is the author of The Symphony: A Listener’s Guide and The Concerto: A Listener’s Guide, both published by Oxford University Press (and available at the Symphony Store, in the orchestra lobby). His new work, Choral Masterworks: A Listener’s Guide, was published in 2005 (also by OUP). For the Love of Music, a volume of essays (with Larry Rothe), was published in 2006.