In what’s become an annual tradition at SF Classical Voice, we once again asked you, the readers, to sound off about the best performers and performances of the past season. As always, the Audience Choice Awards were completely reader-driven — you nominated the finalists, and you voted for the winners. This year’s response in the San Francisco Bay Area was very heartening. With thousands of votes submitted, you proved there is an engaged and passionate audience that is just as interested in smaller groups and emerging talent as in big stars.
Plenty of categories came down to just a few votes, and the winners and nominees definitely reflect the diversity of programming and voices that the Bay Area has always sustained. We hope that the results of this year’s poll encourage even more risk-taking in upcoming seasons, as the Bay Area continues to show why a vibrant arts scene is indispensable to a great community.
Best Opera Singer: Amanda Forsythe
This East Coaster flew in to do one concert with Voices of Music at the Berkeley Festival and Exhibition and ended up blowing people away with both her technique and artistry. SFCV’s Michael Zwiebach wrote, “The whole effect was more than the sum of its parts. Forsythe was a star presence. … Occasionally she’d shoot the audience a sidelong glance as she prepared to slay us with another fusillade of 16th notes. Duly warned, we were still bowled over.” Bay Area favorite and 2021–2022 winner in this category Nikki Einfeld came in second.
Best Chamber Ensemble: Voices of Music
Winning this category, as in 2023 and 2022 (and before that), Hanneke van Proosdij and David Tayler’s excellent organization deserves plaudits for its performances. Often we get carried away just reporting on VoM’s superbly managed YouTube channel, which features many high-resolution recordings. The ensemble’s dedicated audience put it over the top again this year against a surprise challenge from fans of the fantastic Quinteto Latino.
Best Choral Ensemble: San Francisco Symphony Chorus
Recently in the news for its contract dispute with SF Symphony management, this chorus is as high quality as the orchestra it performs with. Now under the direction of Jenny Wong, the SFS Chorus had a number of shining moments in 2023–2024, from Igor Stravinsky’s Les noces to a rip-roaring Carmina Burana to season-ending performances of Gustav Mahler’s Third Symphony. Usually a wide-open category, the SFS Chorus stomped to victory this year.
Best Early Music/Baroque Ensemble: Voices of Music
VoM’s fans take this little competition seriously, and we’re happy they do. It’s worth noting that the amazing, nearly 40-year-old American Bach came within a handful of votes of unseating the perennial champs in this category. The Bay Area is blessed with an unusually deep field of early music organizations. Among the other nominees, the estimable Valley of the Moon Music Festival came in a strong third.
Best New Music Ensemble: Kronos Quartet
In another hotly contested category with a different winner compared to the past few years, readers decided to honor the pathbreaking musicians of the Kronos Quartet. With two of its long-serving members, violinist John Sherba and violist Hank Dutt, retiring this year after a continuous celebration of the group’s 50th anniversary, Kronos made news for all the right reasons. Hardly resting on its laurels, the Quartet continues to commission and perform new works and develop more far-reaching partnerships with musicians around the world.
Best Orchestra: San Francisco Symphony
Speaking of perennial winners, there’s no organization that’s going to challenge papa bear in this category. The SF Symphony took nearly 50 percent of the votes here. Under Esa-Pekka Salonen’s inspiring leadership, the orchestra took chances and also mixed it up with the regular folk, expanding its film-in-concert series, including doing the first Lord of the Rings movie to full auditoriums at Davies Symphony Hall.
Best Conductor: Esa-Pekka Salonen
Unlike the orchestra category, this was not a walkover. Bay Area music fans are clearly passionate about their leaders, and Mary Chun (of Earplay and Pocket Opera) and Jeffrey Thomas (of American Bach) were close to unseating Salonen. The SF Symphony’s outgoing music director nevertheless took top honors again, as readers chose to honor his extraordinary success and close partnership with the orchestra’s musicians.
Best Instrumental Soloist: Hanneke van Proosdij
The co-director of Voices of Music is usually seated at her harpsichord, from where she directs the ensemble. But she sometimes forsakes the keyboard to take up one of her recorders. Her virtuosity on these small, unassuming instruments seems of a piece with her stage presence. Thanks to VoM’s steadfast fans, she just barely beat Gail Hernández Rosa, who’s played her violin with many of the Bay Area’s historical-performance groups.
Best Jazz Soloist: Marcus Shelby
The 2021–2022 winner in this category easily retook the title here. The bassist is a local fave, and his ensembles leave a big footprint in the Bay Area, partly because of Shelby’s commitment to education and partly through his work as a composer. Voters were so single-mindedly focused on the Marcus Shelby Orchestra that it turned out several of the runners-up, including vocalists Tiffany Austin and Kenny Washington, also perform with the group.
Best Opera Performance: Pocket Opera, La bohème
Here’s a welcome surprise: the triumph of one of the Bay Area’s smallest companies over much bigger institutions. More than 40 percent of voters chose Pocket Opera’s appealing production in Donald Pippin’s dexterous translation over the runner-up, Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence at San Francisco Opera. Interest was no doubt piqued by Pocket Opera’s young cast consisting of singers who have been regularly seen around the Bay Area.
Best Chamber Performance: Voices of Music, “An Evening in Vienna”
VoM easily nailed down another win in this category. With tenor Thomas Cooley and fortepianist Eric Zivian (co-founder of Valley of the Moon Music Festival) performing Schubert lieder and the extraordinary violinist Augusta McKay Lodge playing Clara Schumann’s Three Romances, Op. 22, it’s no wonder the concert was a hit.
Best Choral Performance: San Francisco Symphony and Chorus, Igor Stravinsky’s Les noces
The SF Symphony and Chorus came out on top in this category with a performance of Stravinsky’s challenging score in an arrangement by Steven Stucky. Although SFCV reviewer Lisa Hirsch was disappointed with the new orchestration, she praised the SFS Chorus for “precision, enthusiasm, and good sound.” Hot on the heels of the winners was Chanticleer’s traversal of Guillaume de Machaut’s Messe de Nostre Dame.
Best Dance Performance: San Francisco Ballet, Mere Mortals
The company scored a big win with this world premiere — “the first evening-length ballet created for SF Ballet by a woman [and] the first ballet that this 90-year-old mostly classical troupe will dance without regard to hierarchy … or gender,” as SFCV’s Aimée Ts’ao wrote. The audience loved it so much that SF Ballet brought the production back for a second run in April. Given the success of SF Ballet’s season as a whole, it’s no small thing that the crown jewel was this work by Aszure Barton, “based on the ancient myth of Pandora’s box but updated to today’s high-tech world.” No wonder SFCV dance enthusiasts awarded it the laurels.
Best Early Music/Baroque Performance: American Bach, Bach’s St. John Passion
There’s no better way to define deep musicality than American Bach plus conductor Jeffrey Thomas performing J.S. Bach’s vocal masterpieces. As SFCV’s Steven Winn wrote, the ensemble’s March performance of the St. John Passion “reminded rapt listeners … what a gripping feat of musical storytelling this great work is.” SFCV readers voted this performance into the winner’s circle in a very competitive category filled with worthy finalists.
Best New Music Performance: Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, “Butterflies, Moons, and Mirrors: A Saariaho Celebration”
Celebrating the “warm, inviting, yet stimulating” music of Kaija Saariaho, as SFCV’s reviewer Jeff Rosenfeld described it, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble won a competitive contest in this category. Saariaho, who died in 2023, was a major presence in the Bay Area this season, with the U.S. premiere of Innocence at SF Opera in June. Left Coast’s presentation of Saariaho’s chamber music showed another side of the iconic composer, who held a prestigious residency at UC Berkeley in 2015. Opera Parallèle’s Birds & Balls was a close second in this category.
Best Orchestral Performance: San Francisco Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas Conducts Mahler’s Fifth
Michael Tilson Thomas, who led the SF Symphony for 25 years, is celebrated for his interpretations of Gustav Mahler. Amid a battle with brain cancer, MTT has continued to conduct triumphant performances. Readers selected his concerts of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, billed as his final appearances with the orchestra, as a highlight of the season, handing him the prize here for the second consecutive year. Esa-Pekka Salonen’s rendition of Mahler’s Third was the runner-up, suggesting that readers were swept up by the composer’s symphonies on multiple occasions this season.
Best Instrumental Recital: Rachell Ellen Wong, “Artist Spotlight” at Valley of the Moon Music Festival
Violinist Rachell Ellen Wong was the clear winner in this category, having captivated audiences with an engaging “cabaret-style” performance at the Valley of the Moon Music Festival. Wong, who specializes in Baroque performance, also won this category two years ago. She has staying power as a luminary in her field, and we look forward to seeing what she does next.
Best Vocal Recital: Voices of Music, “Voice of the Viol”
The always impressive VoM was joined by soprano Amanda Forsythe, winner in this year’s Best Opera Singer category, for an enchanting performance at the Berkeley Festival and Exhibition in June. The close runner-up was the Merola Opera Program’s Summer Festival opener, “The Song as Drama.”
Best Large Venue: War Memorial Opera House
The home of SF Opera and SF Ballet edged out the incumbent Davies Symphony Hall for the first time this year, taking the top prize by a tiny margin. Readers recognized the lavish auditoriums on Van Ness Avenue as cornerstones of the city’s musical life, but UC Berkeley’s Hertz Hall made an impressive showing for the East Bay in third place.
Best Small Venue: Gunn Theater at the Legion of Honor
Aficionados know that chamber music is best heard in an intimate setting, and this is what the Gunn Theater, home to the SF Symphony’s chamber concerts, among other performances, provides local audiences. Readers also signaled their appreciation of the Bay Area’s sacred spaces, selecting First Congregational Church of Berkeley and St. Mark’s Lutheran Church of San Francisco as runners-up.
Best Club Venue: Freight & Salvage
With its third consecutive win, the historic Berkeley venue seems to have this category locked down. With roots in the antiestablishment atmosphere of the 1960s, Freight & Salvage is keeping traditional music alive with its varied community-oriented programming.
Best Festival: Valley of the Moon Music Festival
Readers made their appreciation for the Valley of the Moon Music Festival resoundingly clear in this year’s vote, with the festival’s programs making a strong showing in many categories. Although the Merola Opera Program’s Summer Festival gave Valley of the Moon a run for its money, the latter’s 10th anniversary, with the theme of “Music Across the Americas,” was chosen as the favorite among the embarrassment of riches available to Bay Area concertgoers during the summer festival season.
Best New Discovery: Diana Skavronskaya in Pocket Opera’s La bohème
The poor seamstress Mimì is one of opera’s enduringly beloved roles, and our readers were smitten by what soprano Diana Skavronskaya brought to the character in Pocket Opera’s English-language production this summer. The little company is succeeding in its mission to bring accessible and inviting performances to audiences across the Bay Area.
