The San Francisco Symphony has named Elim Chan, the Honk Kong-born conductor, as the orchestra's next Music Director. She has signed a six-year contract and will take up her post in September 2027. Chan is the first female musical director in the the orchestra's 115-year history.

Until then, Chan has been named the Music Director Designate, with her first performance scheduled for June 5 and 6. She will be conducting Richard Wagner's Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, Hector Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été, and Claude Debussy's La Mer.

Chan, 39, grew up in Hong Kong the eldest of three children. She attended Smith College in Northampton Mass., studying Italian and forensics, until she developed a passion for singing in the collegiate choir. According to an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, one day her choir director asked her to fill in as conductor during a rehearsal of Vivaldi's Requiem so that he could check the room's acoustic balance. "That was my thunderbolt moment," she said. "when everything just seemed to line up, and I knew that this was what I had to do. It was as if a voice said to me, 'What are you running away from? What are you waiting for?'"

Chan went on to receive a Bachelor of Arts degree in music from Smith College, a Master of Music degree from University of Michigan, where she was also the director of the schools' Campus Symphony Orchestra, and a Doctor of Musical Arts. Chan's first post as musical director was for the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra in Belgium starting in the 2019-2020 season. Her tenure had a rocky start due to the Covid pandemic, and she left the position during the 2023-2024 season, a year before her contract ended.

"The San Francisco Symphony is one of the truly great orchestras of the world, and I am honored to take the podium as its next Music Director," Chan said in the Symphony's press release. “From my very first encounter with this orchestra, I have been genuinely struck by the generosity of its musicians—exemplified in their sound, their music-making, and in their spirit. The Bay Area has long been the place where the future gets invented. This orchestra carries that same restless, forward-looking energy in everything it does."

Watch her introduction below: