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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

Opening Night Gala

The San Francisco Symphony Orchestra performing during the 2022 Opening Night Gala.

September 22, 2023
201 Van Ness Ave, San Francisco, CA 94102, USA

As if the orchestral palette of Richard Strauss’s Don Juan and Ravel’s Boléro were insufficiently splashy, Esa-Pekka Salonen and his San Francisco Symphony have called in the video wizards of 59 Productions, whose myriad razzle-dazzle credits include the Metropolitan Opera’s Satyagraha (Philip Glass) and the Lightroom spectacular Bigger and Closer Not Smaller and Further Away (David Hockney). Also on the program: the penetrating baritone Simon Keenlyside in Mahler’s manic-depressive Songs of a Wayfarer, and Anders Hillborg’s Rap Notes, in which live rappers “square off against artificial intelligence in a captivating collision of human creativity and technological prowess.” —Matthew Gurewitsch