SFCM to Expand Creative Incubator Model in 2026-27 Season

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The conservatory partners with industry leaders to offer recurring opportunities in artist residencies, internships, and professional ensemble collaborations.

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The San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) is actively engaged in a major long-term transformation, establishing itself as the leading institution for artistic training at the intersection of classical music, entrepreneurial initiative, and music business careers. Since David H. Stull began his tenure as president in 2013, the Conservatory has completed an all-purpose “vertical campus,” the Ute and William K. Bowes, Jr. Center for Performing Arts.

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Celebrating its fifth anniversary this season, the building houses most of the SFCM student body, while also incorporating dining, classrooms, rehearsal rooms, performance spaces, state-of-the art recording facilities, and much more. SFCM has also established novel programs in Technology and Applied Composition (TAC) and Roots, Jazz, and American Music (RJAM); as well as adding business minors and 24 professional development classes. Crucially, SFCM has also created an unprecedented connection to the professional music industry through its acquisition of three partners: Opus 3 Artists, Askonas Holt – celebrating 150 years of artist management this season – and the Pentatone label, which is itself recognizing 25 years of artistic excellence, technological innovation, and a deeply curated approach to classical music recording. Together with SFCM, these companies form a Global Creative Alliance – all benefiting in turn from the facilities offered by the Bowes Center – that stands alone in the music education field.

The integration of these partners into the culture of the Conservatory becomes increasingly tangible for students in the 2026–27 season. Some of the most successful one-time collaborations the Alliance has enabled will now be recurring parts of the student experience, including annual artist residencies, internships with Alliance members, side-by-side performances with leading professional ensembles, and recording-centered work. Examples this season include a residency by conductor Giancarlo Guerrero, who will work with students and conduct a performance by the SFCM Orchestra; a residency by conductor Louis Lohraseb, who will lead SFCM's Voice program in Puccini's Suor Angelica; a recital and masterclasses by tenor Ian Bostridge and pianist Julius Drake; and side-by-side projects with Alliance artists Il Pomo d'Oro and Canadian Brass.

Alongside the opportunities afforded by the Global Creative Alliance are those reflecting the breadth of SFCM's own offerings. The RJAM Big Band returns to the Monterey Jazz Festival (Sep 26); SFCM Orchestra Music Director Edwin Outwater conducts Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony (Sep 26); the same program on which Giancarlo Guerrero leads the orchestra in music of Roberto Sierra and Bartók features two student conductors leading works by Jimmy López and Ravel (Nov 14); and SFCM's Voice program, which expanded its curriculum in 2024 to include contemporary music and musical theater, presents productions of Puccini's Suor Angelica (Nov 19 & 20) and Sondheim's Into the Woods (Dec 11 & 12).

About his vision for SFCM, President David H. Stull says:

“Our collective ambition is to build the most innovative professional music school in the world, one that provides a transformative education of peerless excellence and launches highly successful artists and individuals who are educated for life. Within the Conservatory this of course means world-class faculty providing unparalleled technical training and access to state-of-the-art performance spaces and recording facilities. Our integrated curriculum extends to things like film and media scoring; Roots, Jazz, and American music; and entrepreneurship and business. At the same time, our creative partners Opus 3, Askonas Holt, and Pentatone allow the school to be a guided immersion in and exchange with the professional world. Our students recognize themselves from day one as critical components of the professional musical ecosystem, not hopefuls waiting to graduate but active and valued participants.”

In 2021, SFCM opened the Ute and William K. Bowes, Jr. Center for Performing Arts, which dramatically amplifies the scale of opportunity SFCM provides for students and deepens engagement with the community of San Francisco's Civic Center. A “vertical campus” designed by Mark Cavagnero Associates, the $200 million, 170,000 square-foot Bowes Center – in addition to being a hub for Conservatory operations – also incorporates faculty and partner offices and San Francisco's KDFC Classical Radio station. The building enables students to create, learn, and share music in an integrated, collaborative environment in the cultural heart of the city, located an easy walk from SFCM's main 50 Oak Street location, as well as the San Francisco Symphony, Opera, Ballet, and JAZZ Center, all of which have educational partnerships with SFCM.

The Bowes Center's state-of-the-art recording facilities serve as an additional tool to integrate the student body with Global Creative Alliance members and the broader professional music industry. Studio G is a large recording and performance space that houses many of TAC's concerts and large recording sessions, and the acoustics are so impressive that the Recording Academy hosted a listening event there before the 2021 Grammy Awards. Among the commercial recordings that have benefited from the space are the Pentatone retrospective album Grace: The Music of Michael Tilson Thomas . Pianist Lara Downes – an SFCM Pre-College alum – recorded her Rhapsody in Blue Reimagined on Pentatone with the SFCM Orchestra led by Edwin Outwater in 2023. The new Pentatone album Spaces, released earlier this month, collects world premiere recordings of contemporary works by composers from across the globe, and includes SFCM graduate Zoe Yost's Three Hymns for Wind Quintet, selected at the suggestion of SFCM's Composition Department chair David Conte .

By the time of Stull's appointment at SFCM, he had been a faculty member or administrator at Oberlin, Lawrence University, the Aspen Music Festival, and The Juilliard School. Well before the pandemic, those experiences and others germinated his idea that a direct relationship with a management company could be a key factor in building a unique conservatory. With the onset of the pandemic he led SFCM's acquisition of Opus 3 Artists in 2020. The success of that venture led to the further acquisition of both Pentatone and Askonas Holt in 2022, creating an Alliance of independently operated music organizations unique in higher music education. Among many other benefits, the Alliance gives the Conservatory and its partners a global reach, with physical presences in Amsterdam, Berlin, London, New York, and San Francisco.

Stull's vision is for the combination of the Bowes Center and Global Creative Alliance to serve as a one-of-a-kind creative incubator. All four Alliance members have access to one another's expertise in teaching, artist management, touring, presenting, recording, distribution, fundraising, marketing, communication, human resources, and information technology – and to world-class performance halls, recording studios, and accommodations. Another purpose is to encourage and support risk-taking, both artistically and entrepreneurially. The Alliance acts as a research and development engine for the music industry by enabling professional musicians to experiment on the Conservatory's campus with projects that might not otherwise be afforded, creating opportunities for students, artists, presenters, and audiences alike to develop and experience new ideas, expand the recording and distribution of important works, and shape pathways to a sustainable future.

The Alliance also creates built-in relationships with a long list of world-class artists for campus residencies and special projects. Cellist Alisa Weilerstein , an Opus 3 and Askonas Holt artist who also records on Pentatone, had a recent week-long residency at SFCM that included performances of her FRAGMENTS project, which intersperses the 36 movements of Bach's solo cello suites with 27 new commissions to make six hour-long programs. In addition to Weilerstein's performances, SFCM cello students were assigned various of the commissioned pieces to work on with her, both individually and in a masterclass. Pianist Yuja Wang 's residency expanded her own horizons, giving collaborative performances with students, debuting a new work with students from the RJAM program, and collaborating with San Francisco's contemporary ballet company Alonzo King LINES Ballet. Composer Jake Heggie – a faculty member since 2025 – and librettist Gene Scheer workshopped their operas Intelligence and The Judgment of Paris with three nights of SFCM student readings, and the latter opera featured Opus 3 artist Nicholas Phan. Pianist Lara Downes – an SFCM Pre-College alum – was joined in New York this past June by a quartet of current and former students from the RJAM program to perform in her “Next250” concert at Lincoln Center, part of her ambitious years-long The Declaration Project. Opus 3 Artists Academy of St Martin in the Fields visited in 2023 for a three-day residency that included masterclasses and culminated in a side-by-side performance with students, and in 2025 38 SFCM students gave a performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade with the orchestra and Music Director Joshua Bell in San Francisco's Davies Symphony Hall.

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/san-francisco/article/San-Francisco-Conservatory-to-Expand-Creative-Incubator-Model-20260924)._