The San Francisco Symphony Had 12 Grammys, a Visionary Conductor, and a $400 Million Endowment. Then It Fell Apart.

Michael Tilson Thomas led the San Francisco Symphony for 25 years — one of the longest tenures of any American conductor with a major orchestra. Under MTT, the SFS won 12 Grammy Awards. It launched its own recording label. It produced a PBS television series. It was, by broad consensus, among the five finest orchestras in the United States.

Six years after his departure, the San Francisco Symphony has no music director. It is running back-to-back operating deficits totaling $26.6 million. Its chorus went on strike after management proposed cutting their pay by 80 percent. Its orchestra musicians authorized a strike one week before opening night. Its innovative programming has been gutted. Its concert hall is so acoustically compromised that the organization has hired Frank Gehry to redesign it — at a cost exceeding $100 million that it cannot currently afford.

And the man MTT chose as his successor — Esa-Pekka Salonen, one of the most respected conductors alive — quit after five years, telling the world he did not "share the same goals for the future of the institution as the Board of Governors does."

This is the story of how one of America's great orchestras fell apart. It is told entirely through public filings, official statements, and on-the-record reporting.

The MTT Era: What They Had

For 25 years, Michael Tilson Thomas gave the San Francisco Symphony something most orchestras never have: a genuine identity.

He didn't just conduct the standard repertoire. He built a programming philosophy around American music — Copland, Ives, Gershwin, John Adams — and recorded it on SFS Media, the orchestra's own label. The recordings won 12 Grammy Awards. The Keeping Score PBS series brought orchestral music to a national television audience. MTT's charisma and intellectual ambition made the SFS a cultural institution that mattered beyond the concert hall.

The finances reflected this. During the MTT era, the endowment grew substantially. Subscriptions were robust. The orchestra attracted major donations. The operating model, while always dependent on philanthropy (as all American orchestras are), was fundamentally stable.

MTT's final season was 2019-20 — cut short by COVID. He had announced his departure well in advance. The board had years to plan the transition. They hired Esa-Pekka Salonen.

It was, on paper, the most significant conductor appointment in America.

The Salonen Promise

Esa-Pekka Salonen is not a minor figure. As Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1992 to 2009, he transformed that orchestra from a second-tier American ensemble into arguably the most dynamically programmed orchestra on the continent. He championed living composers. He oversaw the opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall. He made the LA Phil relevant in ways no one had imagined.

San Francisco hired him in 2018. He was to begin in the 2020-21 season.

Then the pandemic hit.

Salonen's first season was almost entirely canceled. He could not build relationships with the orchestra, the audience, or the community. He effectively lost eighteen months. When he finally began working in earnest, he programmed what he programs best: sophisticated, contemporary-leaning seasons with living composers, multimedia projects, and Nordic repertoire.

The artistry was praised. SF Classical Voice called his programs "very likely the most sophisticated of any American orchestra."

The seats were not full.

The Numbers: A Decade of Financial Data

The San Francisco Symphony's IRS Form 990 filings tell a story the board would prefer to frame differently. Here is the complete record:

The two most recent years are the crisis: FY2023 lost $9.8 million. FY2024 lost $16.8 million. Combined: $26.6 million in back-to-back deficits.

Management claimed a "cumulative deficit of $116 million over the past decade." When pressed on this figure, they revised it in May 2025 to a "15-year $46 million deficit." Critics noted that the 990 data shows net assets actually grew from $244 million in 2012 to $404 million in 2024 — a $160 million gain despite the deficits. The numbers management cites and the numbers on the tax returns do not tell the same story.

The FY2022 figure — $145 million in revenue — was an anomaly driven by large one-time gifts or investment gains. Strip it out and the pattern is clear: an organization that spends $80-85 million a year and reliably generates $65-75 million, with the gap covered by endowment draws and occasional windfalls.

The Salonen Departure

On March 14, 2024, Esa-Pekka Salonen announced he would not continue as Music Director. His statement was one sentence of devastating clarity:

"I have decided not to continue as music director of the San Francisco Symphony, because I do not share the same goals for the future of the institution as the Board of Governors does."

This is not the language of an amicable parting. This is a world-class conductor publicly stating that the people who run the San Francisco Symphony want something different from what he wants — and that what they want is not something he can be part of.

The musicians' union issued its own statement, attributing Salonen's departure to "the Board of Governors' lack of investment in the future of the Symphony." They cited the cancellation of innovative programming, the elimination of touring, and the gutting of new commissions.

Salonen's final concert was in June 2025: Mahler's Second Symphony — the Resurrection. Audience members reportedly shouted "don't go" from their seats.

He served five years. His predecessor served twenty-five. The institution that hired both of them drove the second one away.

What Got Cut

The board's response to the financial crisis was to cut the things that made the San Francisco Symphony worth attending:

• SoundBox — the experimental concert series that had become a signature initiative — curtailed
• Semi-staged productions — eliminated
• New commissions — reduced
• Touring — cut
• Concerts for Kids — cut
• The Emerging Black Composers Project — a program commissioning 10 works by early-career Black American composers over 10 years — was paused (the Symphony later stated the work was "continuing," but the pause was reported by KRON4)

Management's explanation: "The limiting factor is solely a lack of immediate financial resources."

The 2025-26 season — the first without a music director — was described by critics as assembled like a "Top Hits of Classical Music channel on Spotify." One reviewer called it "dispiriting provincialism driven by evident or imagined desperation." Another described it as "just an embarrassment of riches with no purpose other than to get audiences to fill the seats to hear the next blockbuster."

The musicians responded by distributing protest leaflets before concerts in the final weeks of the 2024-25 season.

The Chorus Strike

In September 2024, the San Francisco Symphony's management proposed cutting the professional chorus budget by 80 percent.

This is not a typo. Eighty percent.

The 32 professional singers — whose work is essential for major choral-orchestral works like Beethoven's Ninth, Verdi's Requiem, and the Brahms German Requiem — were told their individual salaries would be slashed from $21,621 to $4,324 for the season.

All 32 paid chorus members voted unanimously to authorize a strike on September 16, 2024. The strike began days later. The season-opening Verdi Requiem was canceled. Two additional performances were also lost.

The strike ended when an anonymous donor contributed $4 million to cover the gap. The settlement maintained a minimum salary of $22,053 with guaranteed 26 choral performances and 53 rehearsals per season.

The chorus was saved by a stranger's checkbook, not by the institution's commitment to its own artists.

The Orchestra's Strike Authorization

One year later, in September 2025, the orchestra musicians themselves authorized a strike — one week before the 2025-26 season opener.

The key issues: pay that had not been fully restored to pre-pandemic levels, the lack of artistic leadership (no music director), and demands for financial transparency.

A tentative three-year collective bargaining agreement was announced at the September 12 season-opening concert, averting the strike. Under the new contract, the minimum salary rises from $165,000 to $177,000+ over three years. Average total compensation: $213,000, rising to $229,000+.

The musicians noted publicly that management salaries had been fully restored to pre-pandemic levels while musician salaries had not. This was the proximate cause of the strike authorization.

What Management Earns

While the chorus was being told to accept an 80% pay cut, and musicians were being asked to accept salaries below pre-pandemic levels, the organization's leadership was compensated as follows (FY2024 Form 990):

• Matthew Spivey, CEO: $724,481
• Alexander Barantschik, Concertmaster: $577,132
• Leigh Brawer, Chief Philanthropy Officer: $373,466

The CEO of an organization running a $16.8 million annual deficit — an organization that tried to cut its chorus pay by 80%, whose music director quit in protest, whose musicians authorized a strike — earned $724,481.

The DEI File

The San Francisco Symphony has invested significant institutional energy in diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives:

• DEI work began in fall 2018 with a cross-constituent workgroup spanning the Board, Staff, and Orchestra
• The organization hired Jessica Schmidt as a facilitator and joined the Sphinx National Alliance for Audition Support (NAAS)
• In 2022, the SFS engaged Black Women's Blueprint as DEI consultants
• An Inclusive Programming Initiative was launched — the Symphony stated that representation of female and BIPOC composers "exponentially increased" within five years, though no hard targets were set
• The Symphony established 8 "Collaborative Partners" including bassist/vocalist/composer Esperanza Spalding and AI entrepreneur Carol Reiley
• The Emerging Black Composers Project (EBCP) was created with a goal of commissioning 10 works by early-career Black American composers over 10 years, including the annual Michael Morgan Prize
• Regular "Equity Chats" were instituted — open to the full orchestra — to discuss audition bias elimination

Then the money ran out.

The Emerging Black Composers Project was paused (per KRON4). SoundBox — which attracted younger, more diverse audiences than the traditional subscription series — was curtailed. Concerts for Kids — one of the most direct community engagement programs — were cut. Touring — which takes the orchestra's music beyond the Davies Hall subscriber base — was eliminated.

The DEI initiatives were built during a period of relative financial stability. They were among the first things cut when the money tightened. The question this raises is whether the institutional commitment to diversity was structural or decorative — whether it was woven into the fabric of the organization or hung on the wall where it could be removed when the room needed to be repainted.

The Hall Problem

Davies Hall opened in 1980. It has been acoustically criticized since day one.

The sound is routinely described as dry, unfocused, and lacking warmth — the opposite of what symphonic music needs. An acoustic renovation in 1992 improved things marginally. The hall remains widely considered one of the weakest among major American orchestra venues.

For comparison: the LA Philharmonic plays in Walt Disney Concert Hall (2003, designed by Frank Gehry, acoustics by Yasuhisa Toyota) — one of the finest concert halls in the world. The Chicago Symphony plays in Symphony Center (1904, renovated 1997) — a hall with legendary warmth. The Boston Symphony plays in Symphony Hall (1900) — acoustically perfect for over a century.

The San Francisco Symphony plays in a building that sounds like an office lobby.

In September 2023, the SFS filed plans for a comprehensive renovation. The architects: Mark Cavagnero Associates and Gehry Partners — Frank Gehry's firm, the people who built Disney Hall.

The plans are ambitious:

• Expand from 210,200 to 247,780 square feet
• Reduce seating from 2,700 to 2,100 (smaller hall, better acoustics)
• Add a new 400-seat recital hall
• Add a restaurant and event spaces
• Estimated cost: at least $100 million

The entitlement process alone was projected to take two years. Given that the organization is running $16.8 million annual deficits, cannot retain a music director, tried to cut its chorus pay by 80%, and saw its musicians authorize a strike, the question of who will pay for a $100 million renovation — and when — remains unanswered.

The LA Phil Comparison

The cruelest comparison for the San Francisco Symphony is the orchestra 380 miles to the south.

The Los Angeles Philharmonic:

• Budget: ~$130-150 million (vs. SFS's $85 million)
• Hall: Walt Disney Concert Hall — one of the world's finest (vs. Davies Hall — one of the weakest)
• Hollywood Bowl: Generates approximately $40-50 million annually in revenue. The SFS has no equivalent asset. This single venue gives the LA Phil a financial advantage that the SFS cannot match.
• Audience development: The LA Phil's YOLA program, Hollywood Bowl popular artist series, and aggressive community engagement have built younger, more diverse audiences
• Financial health: More stable, despite also facing challenges

The Hollywood Bowl is the structural difference that explains almost everything. A massive outdoor amphitheater that draws 17,000+ people per concert for pop, jazz, and classical programming throughout the summer generates revenue that subsidizes the classical season. The SFS has no Hollywood Bowl. It has Davies Hall, which can't even produce decent sound.

Esa-Pekka Salonen left the LA Phil in 2009 after transforming it into a world-class institution with a world-class hall. Sixteen years later, he left the San Francisco Symphony after five years because the board wouldn't invest in the future. The conductor was the same. The institutions were not.

No Conductor

As of the 2025-26 season, the San Francisco Symphony has no music director.

The orchestra that MTT led for 25 years — the orchestra that hired Salonen as the most significant conductor appointment in America — is now programming guest conductors season by season, hoping that somebody, eventually, will want the job.

The problem: the SFS is not an attractive position.

The hall is bad. The finances are bad. The board drove away a world-class music director and won't explain why their "goals" differed from his. The chorus went on strike. The orchestra authorized a strike. Management earns $724,000 while asking musicians to accept less than their pre-pandemic pay.

Which conductor of international stature would look at this and think: yes, this is where I want to build my legacy?

What MTT Left Behind

Michael Tilson Thomas built something real in San Francisco. He gave a quarter of a century to an orchestra and a city. He won 12 Grammys. He created a recording label. He put the SFS on television. He made the institution matter.

Six years after his final season, the orchestra he built has no conductor, no financial stability, no artistic plan, a hall that doesn't work, and a board that cannot explain what it wants the institution to be.

The endowment is $404 million. The annual deficit is $16.8 million. The CEO makes $724,000. The chorus nearly lost 80% of their pay. The music director quit in protest. The musicians handed out leaflets.

MTT left them a great orchestra. The question is whether the people running it understand what he built.

Sources: IRS Form 990 filings via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer (EIN 94-1156284). SF Classical Voice. San Francisco Chronicle. Slippedisc. NPR. KRON4. ArtsJournal. OperaWire. RIFF Magazine. ICSOM. SFS official statements. Esa-Pekka Salonen public statement (March 14, 2024). SFS Musicians Union statements.