San Francisco Conservatory of Music

01/24/2025

Two talented teens at SFCM are turning senior centers into concert halls, proving that music knows no age limits.

Nikhil Prabhakar, 18, a guitar player, and Mathias Gomez, 16, a violin student, have done a series of performances at Bay Area nursing homes and rehab centers. “I always get joy out of knowing that I bring some happiness to the residents when I perform!” Matthias said.

Part of SFCM’s Pre-College for seven years now, Nikhil’s love for performing is rooted in playing for his family, “I had a deep connection with my two grandparents.” Nikhil would often perform for them before they passed away. “I played guitar for my grandparents, and my senior neighbors and really wanted to continue engaging with our senior community."

Full story below.

Two talented teens at SFCM are turning senior centers into concert halls, proving that music knows no age limits.

01/22/2025

Just steps away from the Bowes Center, a brass ensemble featuring SFCM students performed as Daniel Lurie was sworn in on January 8 as San Francisco’s 46th mayor.

“Music, arts, and culture are essential to our city’s identity and create valuable experiences and employment opportunities for San Franciscans,” the newly elected Mayor Daniel Lurie said. “I was honored to have SFCM students perform at my inauguration, and to have some of our city's finest musical talents represented.”

The City of San Francisco has elected a new mayor, and SFCM was there to set the beat.Just steps away from the Bowes Center, a brass ensemble featuring SFCM students performed as Daniel Lurie was sworn in on January 8 as San Francisco’s 46th mayor.

01/21/2025

The Conservatory’s Professional Development and Engagement Center (PDEC) is launching a new student work initiative, Teach SFCM. This new program is aimed at sharing music with the local community, while also launching the future careers of current students.

“We created a program to prepare SFCM students to excel as private instructors,” Kevin Rogers, SFCM’s community engagement manager said. “Our unique curriculum relies on the best evidence-based practices on effective learning and teaching. Every student learned about designing curriculum to fit all including effective active learning strategies, classroom management, rapport building, and practice techniques.”

SFCM students are setting the tempo of music education in San Francisco, one beat at a time.

01/17/2025

The set may have been short and sweet, but the SFCM talent was big and bold.

SFCM graduates Sarena Hsu (violin) and Alexandra Simpson (viola) performed with pop star Sabrina Carpenter for her performance at NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert in December 2024.

Below, watch the full performance, read about the concert experience, plus what specific advice one alum has for music students today.

The set may have been short and sweet, but the SFCM talent was big and bold.

01/15/2025

If you’re interested in creating music for video games, one SFCM professor wrote the book on it, literally.

The Executive Director of SFCM’s Technology and Applied Composition (TAC) Program Steven Horowitz was nominated for Best Game Audio Article or Publication at the next Game Audio Network Guild (G.A.N.G.) awards, for his book "The Theory and Practice of Writing Music for Games".

Released in 2024, the book aims to educate readers on the inner workings of making music for video games. “Game composers face a host of issues that just don’t exist in linear mediums,” Horowitz said. “It provides a different aesthetic approach and a fascinating compositional challenge unlike any other.”

If you’re interested in creating music for video games, one SFCM professor wrote the book on it, literally.

01/14/2025

“My dad’s whole family is from Dublin, Ireland: He plays accordion and piano, I have one uncle who plays in a cèilidh band and another who was a theory teacher at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin. I grew up primarily in the States, but there was always a lot of Irish music around: I started with the Suzuki method, but I also took fiddle lessons, so every week, we would go to the pub and all the kids would sit in the bar booth and we'd have a little music session and it was good fun.

As I got more into classical, I started seeing similarities with Irish music. If you look at a score for a traditional Irish song, you're just going to get barebones notes, but then you listen to the recording and there's cuts, there's turns, there's all these techniques that aren’t in the score. In a Bach score, the dynamics aren't written in there, a lot of the phrasing isn't, and so it's kind of intuitive, almost, but you have to cultivate the intuition by listening.

The Bach violin sonata in G minor was the first Bach sonata I learned; I think I've been working on it since I was like 12. I used it for my undergraduate auditions, where I was doing trial lessons. I was playing it for all these different teachers across the country, and I was getting so many mixed signals. Because they all have such different opinions, especially with the fugue: I had some people tell me, play all the notes at once with heavy vibrato, and then some people would say no, break all the chords, don't use any vibrato.

So from that experience, I thought, I have to figure out how I actually want to play it, which took me ages. And it still changes sometimes. I bring it back every year and I play it for new teachers every chance I get and it's always something new because people have so many opinions. Some have pretty strong opinions. And now I think at this point, after so many years, I'm starting to have my own pretty strong opinions.”

— Fiona Cunninghame-Murray, first-year master’s student

📸 Matthew Washburn

01/13/2025

The San Francisco Bay Area has no shortage of hidden treasures, and SFCM’s 2025 Winter Term is bringing a few of them into sharp focus.

The school’s annual Winter Term is a chance for students to explore areas outside of their usual academic work. This year, there’s a trio of classes that encourage students to engage with the city they call home in a variety of ways.

The San Francisco Bay Area has no shortage of hidden treasures, and SFCM’s 2025 Winter Term is showcasing enough of them to last a lifetime.

01/10/2025

FACULTY NEWS: RJAM professor David Sánchez has been named as the 2025 LeJENd of Latin Jazz Award Recipient by the Jazz Education Network. Sánchez has been teaching at SFCM since 2017.

“It’s humbling to join a list of amazing artists and past recipients of the LeJends of Latin Jazz ‘Keepers,’” Sánchez says. “I can think of other artists who deserve the acknowledgment, and I just feel honored to be part of the lineage of this art form.

Sánchez is a cornerstone of the RJAM Department’s faculty and one of SFCM’s faculty who also works as part of the SFJAZZ Collective.

SFCM’s RJAM undergraduate program takes a holistic view of "traditional" and Latin jazz from its inception to its current status, offering students apprentice-based models of performing and composing.

Roots, Jazz, and American Music (RJAM) Department Professor David Sánchez has been named as the 2025 LeJENd of Latin Jazz Award Recipient by the

01/08/2025

From legal briefs to musical sheets, he’s fluent in both

As a legal counsel, Danny Kim’s principal area of practice is complex commercial litigation, but at SFCM, his area of practice is the piano.

Since 2022 the 28-year-old Kim has been a Continuing Education (CE) student at SFCM, a division of the Conservatory that offers a variety of musical opportunities designed to suit all levels of interest.

“I picked the piano back up while I was in law school. I was buried in legal studies and needed an outlet,” Kim continued. “Taking piano class through the Continuing Education program gave me a creative escape.”

“Back in law school, I was involved in a mock trial, and giving opening statements or closing arguments reminded me a lot of performing music. Both require you to connect with your audience and keep their attention. That performance aspect definitely carries over,” Kim added.

CE classes do not require any previous musical experience or knowledge and are catered to a music lover's goals.

Learn more ⬇

From legal briefs to musical sheets, he’s fluent in both

01/06/2025

SFCM is feeling a little blue in 2025—and that's a good thing.

RJAM freshman Amithav Gautham was recently featured in a video by KPIX CBS San Francisco Bay Area. A follow-up to a 2022 piece about South Bay blues harmonica player Aki Kumar, the clip showcases Gautham's guitar playing as part of a trio of Bay Area Indian musicians playing classic American blues.

Interwoven with clips of the musicians performing and rehearsing, Gautham explains, "Sometimes blues can be sweet, almost tender in a way, but on the other side, [they] can be aggressive and full of fire. You really can do a lot with just one note in the blues."

Watch the full clip below ⬇

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music is feeling a little blue in 2025—and that's a good thing.

01/03/2025

We could drone on and on about this view of the Bowes Center 😍

12/21/2024

Happy 80th Birthday to Michael Tilson Thomas!

The maestro joined SFCM as Distinguished Professor of Music in early 2024 and has led several coaching sessions with students. SFCM also held a concert with MTT celebrating his recent project “Grace the Music of Michael Tilson Thomas” earlier this year, which raised over $32,000 for cancer research.

From all of us at SFCM, happy birthday MTT! Your baton may guide the symphony, but it’s your passion that truly orchestrates joy.

12/20/2024

Should auld performances be forgot… that’s what the internet is for. From a professional recording of the SFCM Orchestra with Lara Downes to celebrated conductor Michael Tilson Thomas joining the Conservatory faculty, 2024 was a year worth remembering.

The Newsroom is looking back on a busy year for the Conservatory and its students, who celebrated everything from new immersive concert hall technology to big job wins.

Should auld performances be forgot… that’s what the internet is for.As SFCM turns the calendar to another year, the Newsroom is looking back on a busy year for the Conservatory and its students, who celebrated everything from new immersive concert hall technology to big job wins.

12/19/2024

Wishing you a holiday season that’s simply flute-iful!

Enjoy this performance by professor Flutist Yubeen Kim and pianist, Margaret Halbig.

12/19/2024

Drag, drama, and comedy, combine in a historic opera with our Chair of Voice and Opera Studies, Catherine Cook. ⁠
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Cook performed with drag queen and celebrated reality TV star (and classically trained singer), Monét X Change in Daughter of the Regiment recently at Opera Colorado in Denver. ⁠
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“I think this is an incredible opportunity for these two worlds to unite: Drag and opera are the perfect match in my opinion!” Cook said. Both art forms often use dramatic moments, fabulous costumes, and comedic timing to tell a story. ⁠
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This performance was made even more special for Cook, who shared the stage with two SFCM recent voice graduates, Ashley Troester and Alex Granito.⁠
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“I hope we can continue to merge opera and drag and this can lead to more collaboration in the future! I was so grateful to be part of this production with Monét and the entire team at Opera Colorado, and thankful to my students and SFCM for their support!” Cook said.

Technically, the world of opera isn’t a stranger to gender-bending roles with sopranos and mezzos in so-called “trouser” or “pants” roles—but nothing quite like this.

12/17/2024

“I remember really starting to get into music when I was 5 or 6—my mom would put on the Peanuts holiday special every year and sit us kids in front of the TV. And I just remember really liking that music. Before school, I would make it a point to wake up 30, 45 minutes before I was supposed to leave, just so I could sit by our space heater and put the CD in to just listen to that before school.

So I really wanted to play jazz as early as fourth or fifth grade. I wanted to play saxophone, but at my school, you had to play clarinet first, and on instrument selection day, I remember looking at the clarinet and saying to myself, ‘That's gonna be hard. There's a lot of buttons.’ So I just picked the trombone at the very last second because it was ‘just one position,’ and ‘I just had to move my arm.’ Little did I know.

Because I had been taking piano lessons, I had a good degree of fluency in music-making so I wasn’t really practicing trombone very hard. But one day, I took my horn home to practice and I said, ‘Okay, let's see if I can play a chromatic scale.’ And I could, but it sounded horrible. And I thought, ‘I don't want to sound horrible, I want to actually sound good.’ And so that's how I started really practicing, and it became a really regimented thing through all of high school.

I don’t really listen to trombone players. It was always the saxophone players, the trumpet players, the piano players who always really struck a chord with me. So I just wanted to be able to play like them and not have this instrument and its physicality be an obstacle for that. I've been focused really hard on really trying to get my technique solid because there's always pedagogy in jazz trombone about trying to find ways that are easier to play some of these lines, with ghost notes or just laying out, but to me that’s still not really representing the music that can be wrung out.

I can't think of myself doing anything else: The joy I get from just being able to play this music … it expresses a part of me that I can’t with words."

—Nate Gilbreath, Roots, Jazz, and American Music

📸 Jason Wilcox

12/13/2024

SFCM voice faculty Rhoslyn Jones’ staging of Jodi Goble’s Meow and Forever has been recognized as part of the 2023/24 National Opera Association Opera Production Competition.

Twenty-one judges spent over 300 hours viewing the total submissions—and though Jones submitted it to a lower category—they decided to bump Meow and Forever into the Division I category, where it was awarded second place overall.

This was the second year in which Jones staged a Winter Term production specifically for undergrads, who are typically underserved at most institutions regarding performance opportunities in opera. “SFCM is kind of at the forefront of saying, ‘Okay, we're going to put the undergrads front and center,” Jones said. “They certainly have a lot of opportunities to perform here in opera scenes, studio recitals and things like that. But to have a named role as an undergraduate—that is really special.”

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