Elim Chan prepares to take the reins as San Francisco Symphony’s new conductor

Of course, San Francisco is still, in this case, a new city to me. I'm getting to know it bit by bit and it's exciting because you know that, like, I still have so much to learn from the orchestra, from everybody I want to meet, still learn everybody's names. You know, it's, it's, so there's this excitement. At the end of the day, you know that they're in my hands, I'm in their hands. We're a team now. Now that I'm here, I almost felt like I want to create this feeling of like how do I bring in people from different corners of the community, different industries to engage in what I be doing. That's why I feel like you know it's not enough to just create a good program. The program needs to live. Of course there's Beethoven and it's wonderful, and we don't know how it's going to feel. But at the same time I'm like, I want to commission composers that are relevant, that are inviting, that instead of aesthetically illogical, I want static, I want good, I want everything, I want, yeah, bubbling, to be excited, I want to be thinking about it, I want to be discussing things. And also I'm like, not just music, I want it to be also interdisciplinary, so it's focused on like, Can we do things together? Can we make things? This is not cultural. We'll make this about it.