The San Francisco Symphony (SFS) is widely considered to be among the country’s most artistically adventurous and innovative arts institutions. Under Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, the SFS presents more than 220 concerts and presentations annually for an audience of nearly 600,000 in Davies Symphony Hall, other Bay Area venues, and through touring.

Tilson Thomas assumed his post as the SFS’s eleventh Music Director in 1995. Together, he and the San Francisco Symphony have formed a musical partnership hailed as one of the most inspiring and successful in the country.

In 1996, Tilson Thomas led the Orchestra on the first of their fourteen national tours together, and they tour annually to concert halls in Europe, Asia and throughout the United States.

Since 2001, Tilson Thomas and the Orchestra have recorded all nine of Mahler’s symphonies and the Adagio from the unfinished Tenth Symphony, and plan to record the composer’s complete works for voices, chorus, and orchestra for SFS Media.

In fall 2006, Tilson Thomas and the SFS launched the national Keeping Score PBS television series and multimedia project. Keeping Score is the San Francisco Symphony’s national program designed to make classical music more accessible to people of all ages and musical backgrounds. The project is anchored by a national PBS television series that debuted in 2006, and includes an innovative website, www.keepingscore.org, to explore and learn about music; a national radio series, The MTT Files; documentary and live performance DVDs; and an education program for K-12 schools.

The San Francisco Symphony provides the most extensive education and community programs offered by any American orchestra today. In 1988, the Symphony established Adventures in Music (AIM), a free, comprehensive music education program that introduces every first- through fifth-grade child in the San Francisco Unified School District to music from around the world.