San Francisco Symphony Appoints Its First-Ever Female Music Director

Conductor Elim Chan is to be named the 13th music director of the San Francisco Symphony, a position once held by the late Seiji Ozawa. She assumes the post for a six-year term starting September 2027.

Born in Hong Kong, Chan studied at Smith College in Massachusetts and at the University of Michigan. Along with being the SF Symphony Orchestra's first female music director, Chan was also the first female to win the Donatella Flick LSO Conducting Competition in 2014 and the first female (and youngest) conductor to be named chief conductor of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra.

Yet despite this, Chan, in her piece in The Guardian, stated that she preferred not to be given any special emphasis for her gender, writing:

"I do not want my gender, my femininity, to become a crutch of my own. It’s important that we all keep asking questions and challenging the status quo. I am proud of being a woman conductor, but I want to take the next step and go beyond any tags and be seen and valued as the same as my male colleagues."

On her identity as a musician, SF Symphony CEO Matthew Spivey described her as "a musician of unusual gifts and a leader of equal substance — a rare combination — and the one behind her remarkable international rise."