The San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) is a private music conservatory in San Francisco, California, United States. As of 2025, it had 447 students.

History

right|thumb|The Oak Street building in 2017 ([[fisheye perspective)]]

The San Francisco Conservatory of Music was founded in 1917 by Ada Clement and Lillian Hodghead as the Ada Clement Piano School. In 1923, the school was incorporated as the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, becoming the first music conservatory on the west coast. In 1956 the Conservatory moved from Sacramento Street to 1201 Ortega Street, the home of a former infant shelter. It resided there for fifty years, before moving to its current location at 50 Oak Street in 2006.

In 2020, the SFCM added the new Bowes Center at 200 Van Ness Avenue (across from Davies Symphony Hall), a 12-story building that includes dorms (eight floors) with acoustic insulation for 400 of its students, 27 rent-controlled apartments for residents of the older building that was replaced by the construction, and some public performing spaces, including a penthouse concert room with views towards the north and west. The Bowes Center's $200 million cost was largely funded by donors, including $46.4 million from the William K. Bowes Jr. Foundation. The music website "Classical Voice" described this "combination of a music-education organization with two professional music businesses" as "unusual." A student can be denied or accepted based on the pre-screening results. Once the student is accepted beyond the prescreening round, they are called to San Francisco for a final audition to get to know the faculty, and perform for their chosen major's instructor. Once that is clear, the student is either accepted or denied admission into the conservatory. Some areas of the conservatory are more competitive than others, such as composition [which only admits 8–10 students a year out of hundreds of applicants], and the strings department. The faculty values the applicant's personality and musicianship in the auditions.

Directors

  • John Adams (composition, founder of new music ensemble)
  • Jeffrey Anderson (tuba)
  • Elinor Armer (composition)
  • Mason Bates (composition)
  • Luciano Chessa (music history and literature)
  • David Conte (composition)
  • Patricia Craig (voice)
  • Jacques Desjardins (music theory, associate director of new music ensemble)
  • David Garner (composition)
  • Jake Heggie (composition)
  • Andrew Imbrie (composition)
  • Eugene Izotov (oboe)
  • Mark Lawrence (trombone)
  • Lester Lynch (voice)
  • Susanne Mentzer (voice)
  • Garrick Ohlsson (piano)
  • David Tanenbaum (guitar)
  • Ivan Tcherepnin (composition)
  • Indre Viskontas (soprano, neuroscientist)
  • Deborah Voigt (voice)
  • Nancy Zhou (violin)

Notable alumni

  • George Duke (jazz fusion keyboardist, singer, and producer)
  • Barbara Eden (singer)
  • Léopold Simoneau (tenor)
  • Peter Scott Lewis (composer)
  • Miguel del Aguila (composer)
  • Shahad Paranj (composer)
  • David Garner (composer)
  • Isaac Stern (violinist)
  • Aaron Jay Kernis, Pulitzer Prize winning and Grammy Award-winning composer, member of the Yale School of Music faculty
  • Carla Kihlstedt (experimental violinist)
  • Sepideh Moafi (singer)

References

  • Official website