The dynamic and versatile San Francisco Symphony returns to Berkeley with music director Esa-Pekka Salonen in a one-of-a-kind program showcasing the unique musical chemistry between this orchestra and conductor. The SF Symphony plays the world premiere of a new work by Jens Ibsen, the most recent winner of the Emerging Black Composers Project, a collaboration with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music to foster the creation and performance of new music from early-career Black American composers. Ibsen focuses a wide range of life experience and influences into his music—he’s a classically trained, Ghana-born metalhead who sang as a principal soloist in the Vienna Boys Choir—and the panel that selected him praised his music for its “enthralling balance of rhythmic drive, elegant tonality, and beautiful settings of words.” Salonen also conducts his own Kínēma, a showcase for principal clarinetist Carey Bell; and Stravinsky’s cinematic and propulsive Symphony in Three Movements.

Major Support: Fred Levin/Shenson Foundation