Conductor James Gaffigan is ready for a change.
SF Classical Voice is catching up with the native New Yorker during a pivotal moment in his career. Last month, Queen Sofía Palace of the Arts in Valencia, Spain, announced that Gaffigan would be stepping down as music director of the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana on Aug. 31, 2025.
It was an amicable split, the conductor says, as he’s walking away at the end of his four-season contract to make room for more guest engagements. He’ll still be general music director of the Komische Oper Berlin, where he’s currently in his second season. But he hadn’t planned to lead two opera houses at once and would ideally like to split his time between the orchestra stage and the opera pit.
For those keeping track, Gaffigan welcomes the idea of leading an American orchestra in the future. He’s no stranger to the Bay Area, having served as the San Francisco Symphony’s associate conductor from 2006 to 2009.
Since then, he’s been based in Europe, though not entirely of his own volition. In order to be attractive to American orchestras, he felt he needed European credentials. Hence his decade as chief conductor of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and his time as principal guest conductor of both the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra and the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra and Opera.
For years, Gaffigan shied away from programming works by American composers in Europe because he feared being pigeonholed, but he’s now warmed to the idea of bringing this music to overseas audiences. He takes great pride in the fact that he’s a product of the New York public school system — the LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, to be precise.
Gaffigan, who resides in Berlin, chatted with SFCV via video call ahead of his upcoming guest appearances with the SF Symphony, Jan. 9–11, discussing the lessons he’s learned from conducting opera and weighing in on the orchestra’s search for a new music director. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You spent three years as the SF Symphony’s associate conductor, and you’ve returned a few times since. What are you looking forward to this time?
I think the San Francisco Symphony is the most versatile orchestra in the country. I’ve been lucky to conduct every major orchestra in the U.S., and I would say that, although there are many great ones out there, San Francisco can really switch styles on a dime. They’re extraordinary at modern music. They’re extraordinary at what we call the great masters of the past. They’re wonderful with Baroque music. They’re wonderful with jazz, popular music.
So it’s something that I look for as an artist — to work with an ensemble that’s quick to change. If people are stuck in their ways, it’s not so fun to bring music to the table. I’ve always loved [the SF Symphony] for that reason. I know that they have had a lot of new hires recently, and that’s exciting for me because I know some of [the new players]. Some were students with me in school. Some have come from [other U.S.] orchestras. It’s going to be a sort of reunion but also meeting a lot of new people, which is very exciting. And of course, the city. … It’s just such a wonderful place to be.
Back when you were associate conductor, you were this fresh face. It seems that any time an article mentioned your name, it would point out your age. How does it feel to come back now as an established international conductor?
Much better, actually. The thing I had to get away from the most was being an American kid. I was lucky enough to start in my early 20s with The Cleveland Orchestra and then in my mid-20s with San Francisco. In order to be successful in the U.S., usually you have to go out and be successful [in Europe], and then [American orchestras] will take you seriously. The biggest challenge was getting away from that young reputation or “the guy we all know and like.” Returning to a place like San Francisco, I feel more — I don’t want to just say experienced — but I feel I had a lot of interesting things happen for me in Europe, [and] I’m definitely not the kid and definitely not local [anymore]. To come back with what I’ve learned, I have something different to offer now. Of course, yeah, I have gray hair [too].
It’s a cliche to say I feel better as a 45-year-old than I did in my 20s, but it has nothing to do with that. It’s just that in life, you live, learn, and some people learn more quickly than others, and some people have the opportunity to travel and meet a lot of people. I was one of those fortunate people that got to work with many orchestras and many brilliant world-class musicians.
I’m sure that for Bay Area audiences, it’s been gratifying to watch your career over the years.
I hope so. I know a lot of the audience members here, and I’m friendly with many of them. There’s one woman who lives in Healdsburg now whom I’ve kept in touch with. I just wrote to her, “By the way, I’m coming back to the Bay Area.” And she said, “We’re coming with 10 people to the concert.” So it’s very sweet. I have a lot of deep connections with people who own restaurants, hotels, little shops, coffee shops. I remember just simple things, like Blue Bottle Coffee was new when I was [first] here. It was out of a garage, and it was the coffee. I remember telling Michael Tilson Thomas, “You’ve got to try Blue Bottle.”
The personnel of the San Francisco Symphony looks a whole lot different than it did just a couple years ago. In other interviews, you’ve talked about how the best music-making happens with trust. How does a conductor gain the trust of an ensemble, especially when there has been so much turnover?
Turnover is essential to the health of an institution. There’s a famous quote: “Without change, there’s no progress.” But at the same time, the older, more experienced musicians are sharing with the younger ones, and the younger ones are sharing their enthusiasm with the older ones.
It’s essential for great music-making that you work hard, all the while trusting the people in front of you. If you’re acting like a professor lecturing, or if you’re acting like a dictator, if you’re acting like you’re in charge as a conductor, the truth is you’re not at all. You’re not the one making the sound.
The danger with orchestral playing is you come in as this excited musician, you love music, and then you get disturbed that you have to follow all these rules. And you might not like your colleagues, you might not like the conductor, and you feel a bit trapped. For me, it’s always getting people out of that cage and letting them feel that they’re making a real contribution because that’s the truth. They’re making the sound, and when the whole cello section is playing together and breathing together and you have them in your hands, it’s trust. It’s a beautiful concept, but it doesn’t come overnight. It’s something that needs to be worked at in a series of rehearsals or over years or a music directorship.
Given time constraints in rehearsals, have you found it more challenging to come in as a guest conductor?
When you come in as a guest for the very first time, the orchestra decides in the first 30 seconds if they like you or not. Usually their gut instinct is right — if there’s chemistry, no chemistry, or a little bit of chemistry. In my experience, the best thing to do is let them play, listen to them, see what you can control with your eyes and your hands, and then correct or comment on things that need to be corrected or commented on.
For the past couple of years, you’ve been focusing on opera conducting. Is that something you wish to continue?
About 10 years ago, I had a talk with Jonathan Friend, who was working at the Metropolitan Opera as a casting director. I said, “I really want to do more opera, and I don’t understand why the opera companies don’t regularly invite me because it’s my favorite art form.” He said, “Be careful what you wish for because you’ll end up doing a lot.” My managers and I spread the word, and then all of a sudden, I’m here with two opera companies, so it’s kind of an overcorrection of the past. It’s very different from orchestral conducting on a number of levels, but I love it. The plan all along was to have 50-50 orchestral conducting and opera conducting.
I’ve enjoyed very much being in Valencia, which is coming to a close. It’s no hard feelings. I want to guest conduct more institutions that I love, like San Francisco, the New York Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in Munich. With two opera houses, I have very limited time to do those things or perhaps have a relationship with another institution.
Do you see yourself taking up a music directorship with a symphony orchestra in the near future?
I would love that. For me, an institution in the U.S. is so different from working in Germany, Switzerland, or Spain. I think the possibility of being part of a community is very exciting. When you’re a conductor in Berlin, of course you’re part of the community, but I’m seen more as a political figure or leader of an institution. Whereas in America, it’s a lot more about fundraising, meeting other institutions, having relationships with other institutions. That’s fascinating to me, so I do see something [for myself] one day in the U.S.
Can you tell me more about your upcoming San Francisco program? It seems to adhere to a formula used by most American orchestras these days: a new work, a concerto, and then a symphony after intermission. Here you have Missy Mazzoli’s Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres), Samuel Barber’s more introverted Violin Concerto, and then the fireworks of Sergei Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony. Why do it this way?
Regarding your observation, I couldn’t agree with you more on that. It’s predictable, and I don’t like this pattern at all. To be honest, I think it’s ridiculous. I’m a big fan of four-piece programs. People always argue about ticket sales and things like that, but I believe in two composers shining light on one another, just like when you’re in a museum and you see something curated. You see a painting by Paul Klee and then Gustav Klimt, [and] then you look at these things through a different lens because of what you just saw. My favorite thing in the world is putting [composers] side by side: J.S. Bach and Anton Webern, Claude Debussy and Mozart, Iannis Xenakis and Anton Bruckner. Things that give you a different perspective. All major American orchestras are like, “OK, we need a new piece. We need a living composer.” That for me is not enough reason to [program a new work]. You have to do it because you love the music.
The three personalities of the composers [on this program] couldn’t be more different. I love that aspect. You said that Barber’s introverted, but actually I think that his personality wasn’t that. Barber was a gay man in a time when it wasn’t so easy to be a gay man, and he wrote very beautiful music that has defined Americana as much as Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Charles Ives [have]. His music sounds American, and that is an extraordinary accomplishment, considering how young our country is. It’s a human expression of beauty and purity. The Prokofiev is wild. It goes from being sublime to terrifying to absurd within seconds. What all these pieces have in common is that it’s storytelling without a script, and only absolute music can do that.
In Missy Mazzoli’s case, she’s a dreamer, and her music is always filled with fantasy. Her piece is abstract: about orbits, space, the way things come around and meet with one another again, how things get faster and accelerate with time. She just writes great stuff, whether it’s five or 10 minutes or a [longer] symphonic piece. As a conductor, I’m always looking for modern music. The funny thing is, all the artistic administrations are always like, “We need more female composers.” And I’m like, “There’s no problem finding them. There’s so many great female composers.” She got to the top very quickly because she’s a natural.
As the SF Symphony searches for a successor to its outgoing music director, Esa-Pekka Salonen, your name is sometimes floated in local musical circles as a contender, particularly given your SF Symphony connection. Is that a position you’re interested in?
Honestly, anyone who is asked to do that job is a very lucky person. The truth is [the orchestra] needs to know what it wants. This is always my thing, especially looking from a distance now at American orchestras, when they choose Klaus Mäkelä in Chicago and Esa-Pekka in San Francisco. You have to stand back and say, “What are they searching for? What do they want?” If an institution knows what it wants, it’s easy to find it. I’ve had the experience that some institutions do it very well, and some institutions drop the ball because they go for something that the market is interested in.
This could be dangerous for an institution because then you’re just checking off boxes — we want an old European conductor, we want a young female conductor, or we want a person of color. Those things have nothing to do with what the institution needs artistically. For me, I don’t care what gender, what color skin, what nationality you are — you have to fit the mold as a musician first and foremost for the institution, and you need to have the same values and mission statement as the institution.
[The position in San Francisco is] a great opportunity for anyone. There’s a lot of potential for a city that is ever-changing, with the big new tech companies that [are continually] coming in. Some people get frustrated [with tech’s presence in the city], but I think they have to look at it as an opportunity to somehow bring [different worlds] together. As of now, the rumor is that [tech is] not very interested in music. My question is: Why not? People who work in tech, they need to shut off their phones, they need to shut off their brains and enjoy something that has a human impact, an impact on the community, an impact on their lives. I have a feeling that this is a time when there are big changes about to happen in San Francisco, and it’s up to the Symphony [to figure out] how to ride that wave.
What else do you have coming up that you’re excited for?
I’m at an age now where I like to share with the great orchestras in Europe the great American works. So [in March] I’m going to the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra — which is in my opinion one of the two best orchestras in the world, along with the Berlin Philharmonic — with the music of Antonín Dvořák, which was written in America, and Leonard Bernstein, the Serenade (After Plato’s Symposium) with [violinist] Janine Jansen, and George Gershwin’s An American in Paris. It’s exciting to bring that to them.
That seems like something you might have balked at even a decade ago. Were you worried about being typecast as an American?
I needed to get away from the U.S. in order to be invited back to the U.S. It’s an unusual business, and it just works this way, and I don’t know why. Some other countries support their own, like the British supported Simon Rattle when he was very young and [now] Daniel Harding and Robin Ticciati. The Finnish are amazing with these young conductors like Klaus Mäkelä, then they let them go off into the world. Whereas in America, it’s like, “We know you’re good, but there’s better things out there.”
When I start conducting the Munich Philharmonic, all of a sudden the New York Philharmonic said, “We need to have James.” It hurts a little bit to say I’ve always been around. But I understand [the dynamic]. As Americans, we have a big chip on our shoulder about how young our country is. We think if [something] comes from Europe, it must be good. It’s like, “Oh, he has a Russian accent. He must know what he’s talking about with Prokofiev or Rachmaninoff.” This is such an anti-American thing. The U.S. is filled with every type of person, and we should celebrate that we’re all different. You don’t need to come from one place to know one thing.
