It's September, and in the classical music world that means symphony orchestras are busy firing up their new seasons. But amidst the gala concerts, two of America's finest, the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, are opening their 2026 seasons with one eye on the future. Both orchestras have spent the last few years painstakingly searching for new music directors and this spring they made their long-awaited announcements: British conductor Daniel Harding will take over in Los Angeles, while Hong Kong native Elim Chan will move to San Francisco.
It will be a year before either Chan or Harding give their first official downbeat as music directors, but meeting them offers answers to some questions about these crucial choices, which took many classical music observers by surprise. What new directions, if any, might they take with their new orchestras? And how will their leadership impact the temperament and perspective of music-making not only in their own communities, but also internationally.
Conversations with the newly minted music directors quickly reveal two distinct, dynamic personalities ready to embark on their next musical journeys.
Chan, who is 39 years old, is effervescent, quick to laugh and has a surprising hobby she began exploring about 10 years ago.
"I do boxing," she says. "I picked up this new sport because I was looking for something really out of my comfort zone."
Chan's true comfort zone is standing in front of an orchestra — which she discovered by chance. Studying at Smith College in Massachusetts (where she also took courses in forensic science), Chan was asked to step out of the collegiate choir to try her hand at conducting. That turned out to be her "Aha!" moment. Later, she became the first — and so far only — woman to win the Donatella Flick Conducting Competition while earning her doctoral degree at the University of Michigan.
"Elim Chan comes to us rather unknown," says Joshua Kosman, retired classical music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle. "She has had a couple of small leadership positions, made a couple of recordings. She did three different guest appearances in San Francisco over the last few years, and every one of them was just exciting beyond measure."
From an orchestra not known for taking risks when choosing music directors, San Francisco's choice of Chan is being viewed as a bold move by some.
"It's different from what the orchestra has done for the last 35 years," Kosman notes. "The previous three music directors have all been established, somewhat senior figures: Michael Tilson Thomas, Esa-Pekka Salonen and before that, Herbert Blomstedt."
And they've all been men. Chan is the first woman to lead the orchestra in its 115-year history, a fact not lost on her in a male-dominated field.
"The script has always been European maestros who are at the top," she says. "So in that sense, yes, it's a bold choice that San Francisco is willing to break away from this script."
That says a lot about where this orchestra wants to go in the future. A music director's relationship with an orchestra takes a long time to grow and finally blossom. When Chan first guest-conducted the San Francisco Symphony in early 2023, she didn't know quite what to expect.
"It's kind of like a date," she says with a laugh. "You get to know each other. You try to impress each other a bit. And in a few hours you will see if you want another date, right?" But something clicked between her and the San Francisco players. There was chemistry.
"The first thing I was really impressed with was the sound," she recalls. "And sound for me is so attractive, because they play with such heart."
Chan is well aware of the present-day problem of getting people off the couch and into the concert hall. "I feel like we got out of touch with our audience," she admits. "We just do our thing and somehow expect the audience to show up. This doesn't work anymore." Chan wants to convince people that coming to a concert is actually a cool experience you can't get at home or on headphones; she's promising new approaches to create a wow factor. "That accelerating feeling that you just want to get on your feet and yell and scream, 'Bravo!' This is something I want to give the audience."
A "safer" choice for the LA Philharmonic?
If Chan is the bold choice for the San Francisco Symphony, is the seasoned, 51-year-old Englishman Daniel Harding the "safe" choice for the Los Angeles Philharmonic?
"I don't know that I would call it a safe choice," says Kosman. "I think what's interesting is that in the same way San Francisco has historically gone for established senior conductors, Los Angeles has this fabled history of going for the Elim Chan types — in other words, young, unproven artists — and showing enormous success." Harding's predecessor, Gustavo Dudamel, took over the Philharmonic before he was 30. It almost appears that these two orchestras are swapping playbooks.
In terms of personalities, Chan presents as effusive, while Harding is, by admission, a bit more reserved but with a wry sense of humor. When asked why he might be a good fit for the Philharmonic, he pokes back instantly: "That is a horrible question," he insists with a chuckle. "You're almost asking an Englishman to say nice things about themself, which is not something we do."
Harding seems to avoid the limelight. He barely has a website. "I'm not the guy with a million Instagram followers," he claims. "That's never going to be me." (The actual follower count on his official Instagram is just over 2,800. Chan has 27,000.)
Harding is all about the music. He was a wunderkind prodigy while still in his teens, when a teacher taped a rehearsal of him leading an ensemble in Schoenberg's tricky Pierrot Lunaire. The tape made its way to conductor Simon Rattle, who, by coincidence, was preparing the same piece. Rattle was astounded by what he heard and took Harding on as an assistant, raving about his extraordinary natural talent. The young man went on to become the assistant conductor to Claudio Abbado at the Berlin Philharmonic, and first led that orchestra at age 21. His relationship with the Los Angeles Philharmonic goes back some 30 years.
"I love the gardening side of being a music director," Harding says with a smile in his voice. "And I think that the creativity and the energy and just the level of everything that goes on in LA, it's fertile ground."
Harding last led the Philharmonic in the summer of 2025, in the luxurious Second Symphony by Rachmaninov at the Hollywood Bowl. "I found the orchestra so incredibly responsive, willing and generous in terms of what they offered musically," he recalls. "I don't know how you describe it, but there is a thing where you just say, 'This is right.'"
Like Chan for San Francisco, Harding for Los Angeles caught the classical music world off guard.
"He's not all that well-known more broadly," Kosman says. "He's not an established figure like Riccardo Muti, but he does have a track record. And I'm eager to see what he does with [the LA Philharmonic], which has this tradition of iconoclasm and discovery."
Harding's career has been spent primarily in Europe — 19 years leading the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, with whom he made a solid catalog of recordings, from Berlioz, Brahms and Bartok, to Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn.
"He's one of these guys, like Simon Rattle, who just apparently can do anything he puts his hand to, which I think is an impressive achievement," Kosman notes.
Another impressive achievement is Harding's side hustle. He's a licensed pilot who flies commercial jetliners for Air France. And he has an offer for his colleague Elim Chan — with one condition.
"I'm very happy to take Elim in the airplane any time she wants," he proposes. "But I'm absolutely not going to get into a boxing ring with her in return."
These two very individual conductors are poised to take over two of America's great orchestras, and in doing so, help to chart the course of symphonic music made in America. Neither Chan nor Harding fit the mold of the old school authoritarian. "That old European man with a mustache and an attitude, that has ceased to be the default model for what we want in a music director," Kosman says. "And that, I think, is the important breakthrough."
Time will tell just what kind of breakthrough it is for the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In an age when it's often difficult to tell one orchestra from another, busting that default model will hopefully allow the singular personalities of these two conductors to shine through in their music making, giving their ensembles a distinct sound.
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