History and Programs

The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, an ensemble of highly skilled musicians, performs innovative new music of exceptional interest. It attracts and engages audiences through concert events in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, and nourishes the creation and dissemination of new work through commissioning, recording, and outreach. Now in its thirty-eighth year, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players is a national leader among advocates for contemporary chamber music.

The ensemble is led by Music Director David Milnes. The nineteen core members of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players are all active as soloists and chamber musicians. Many are members of the San Francisco Symphony, Ballet or Opera Orchestras; others perform and record with their own chamber ensembles.

A subscription concert series at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts forms the heart of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players’ activities. With average attendance of 300 per concert, the series is one of the best attended of its kind in the United States. Highlights are broadcast on local radio, and have been syndicated in more than fifty countries by the radio program Art of the States. Each concert is preceded by an informative discussion with the evening’s composers and guest artists.

A ten-time winner of the national ASCAP/Chamber Music America Award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players has won this award more times than any other ensemble. The ensemble has performed more than 1,100 contemporary works, including 66 U.S. premieres and 135 world premieres, and has commissioned 67 new pieces from such composers as John Adams, John Cage, Liza Lim, James Newton, Frederic Rzewski, and Julia Wolfe. Known for programming that is international in scope and stylistically diverse, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players focuses its repertoire on music written in the last ten years, with a special emphasis on California composers.

The ensemble has toured widely throughout California with performances on such prestigious concert series as San Francisco Performances, Cal Performances, the Stern Grove Festival, Los Angeles’ Monday Evening Concerts, the Ojai Festival, and the Festival of New American Music in Sacramento. The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players made its European debut at the Cheltenham Festival in 1986 and its East Coast debut at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. in 2001.

In addition to maintaining its active performance schedule, the ensemble has released nineteen recordings, including, most recently, music of Jorge Liderman and of Kui Dong, and a CD of pieces by Pablo Ortiz recorded in collaboration with the men’s chorus, Chanticleer.

The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players’ innovative education programs include musical presentations for students at colleges and high schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, family concerts, and adult classes about new music. Its Contemporary Insights series offers audience members a chance to preview selected performances and to meet and engage with the musicians.