Esa-Pekka Salonen

Esa-Pekka Salonen is renowned as both a composer and conductor. He is the music director of the San Francisco Symphony and conductor laureate of the Philharmonia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. As a member of the faculty of the Colburn School, he directs the pre-professional Negaunee Conducting Program. Salonen co-founded and, until 2018, served as the artistic director of the annual Baltic Sea Festival.

In the 2024-25 season, Salonen led the San Francisco Symphony in world premieres of works by Nico Muhly, Xavier Muzik, and Gabriella Smith, among other programs. He also returned to the Philharmonia Orchestra — both in London and on tour in Italy — and to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he conducted a wide range of programs, including Bryce Dessner’s Violin Concerto with Pekka Kuusisto and Boulez’s Notations with Pierre-Laurent Aimard. 

With the Orchestre de Paris, Salonen conducted a reprise of his and Romeo Castellucci’s staged production of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, Resurrection, and a Boulez Centennial celebration featuring choreography by Benjamin Millepied. He held a Salzburg Easter Festival residency with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, centered on a new Simon McBurney production of Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina.

Salonen’s compositions were performed by 13 different orchestras in the 2024-25 season. He conducted his own pieces Tiu, kínēma, and Cello Concerto with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra; he also conducted the Cello Concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony. With the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, he led his Sinfonia concertante for organ and orchestra. His works, conducted by others, also appeared in programs by the Montreal and Aarhus symphony orchestras (Sinfonia concertante), Munich Philharmonic (Insomnia), Lahti Symphony Orchestra (kínēma), Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and Magdeburg Philharmonic Orchestra (Gemini), Slaithwaite Philharmonic Orchestra (Nyx), Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra (Cello Concerto), and Ensemble intercontemporain (Meeting).

Salonen has an extensive and varied recording career. Releases with the San Francisco Symphony include recordings of Bartók’s piano concertos, spatial audio recordings of several Ligeti compositions, and the world premiere recording of Saariaho’s Adriana Mater. Other recent recordings include Strauss’s Four Last Songs, Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin and Dance Suite, and a 2018 box set of his complete Sony recordings. His compositions appear on releases from Sony and Deutsche Grammophon, among others; his Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto, and Cello Concerto are all featured in recordings he conducted himself.