Danny Elfman

Sarah Hicks is a conductor, educator, arranger, producer, writer, and speaker committed to creating connections through music. She has collaborated with diverse artists including Hilary Hahn, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Rufus Wainwright, Ben Folds, Jennifer Hudson, Smokey Robinson, and Sting. Her passion for cross-genre partnerships led to a 2019 album with rap artist Dessa and the Minnesota Orchestra, where she is principal conductor of Live at Orchestra Hall.

Hicks made her San Francisco Symphony debut in July 2009 and has also worked with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Pops, Toronto Symphony, Melbourne Symphony, RTÉ Orchestra, Danish National Symphony, Czech National Symphony, Saint Petersburg Philharmonic, Tokyo Philharmonic, and Malaysian Philharmonic. Her commitment to new music led to a micro-commission project, and her recording of new concertos, Triple Doubles, has been released by the Bridge label. Her interest in the intersection of mental health and music led to the production of a concert titled Music and the Mind.

Born in Japan and raised in Hawaii, Hicks is fluent in Japanese and holds degrees from Harvard University and the Curtis Institute of Music.

Danny Elfman, film composer, classical composer, singer-songwriter, and recording artist, has garnered international recognition for composing more than 100 feature film scores, as well as compositions for television, stage, and the concert hall. Elfman has been Tim Burton’s composer for more than 35 years, having scored 17 Burton films such as Batman, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Big Fish, Alice in Wonderland, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, as well as music, lyrics, and songs for The Nightmare Before Christmas, for which he also sang the part of Jack Skellington. Elfman was also the lead singer and songwriter for the LA rock band Oingo Boingo for 17 years. 

Elfman has frequently collaborated with director Sam Raimi on films such as Spider-Man and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and with director Gus Van Sant on the Academy Award-winning films Good Will Hunting and Milk. Additionally, he wrote the music for the Men in Black film franchise and the themes for the popular television series The Simpsons, Desperate Housewives, Tales of the Crypt, and more recently Tim Burton’s Netflix series Wednesday.

A native of Los Angeles, Elfman grew up loving film music. He traveled the world as a young man, absorbing its musical diversity. Elfman came to the attention of a young Tim Burton and Paul Reubens, who asked him to write the score for Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. Thirty-seven years later, Elfman and Burton have forged one of the most fruitful composer-director collaborations in film history. Throughout his career, Elfman has been honored with four Academy Award nominations, three Emmy Awards including Outstanding Original Main Title Theme for Wednesday (2023), a Grammy Award (1990), the Richard Kirk Award (2002), the Disney Legend Award (2015), the Max Steiner Film Music Achievement Award (2017), and the Society of Composer and Lyricists’ Lifetime Achievement Award (2022).

Elfman’s orchestral concert works include Serenada Schizophrana, a symphony commissioned by the American Composer’s Orchestra, which premiered at Carnegie Hall in 2005, and Rabbit and Rogue, for the American Ballet Theater choreographed by Twyla Tharp, performed at the Metropolitan Opera House in 2008. In 2017 Elfman premiered his violin concerto Eleven Eleven, written for and performed by violinist Sandy Cameron, which had its world premiere in Prague and was released on Sony Classical in 2019. The album also features a recording of his First Piano Quartet, commissioned and performed by the Philharmonic Piano Quartet Berlin.

Elfman’s Percussion Quartet, commissioned for Third Coast Percussion, was recorded in October 2020. In March 2022, two of Elfman’s classical works had European world premieres: the Percussion Concerto, written for and performed by percussionist Colin Currie with the London Philharmonic, and Cello Concerto, written for and performed by cellist Gautier Capuçon with the Vienna Symphony (and performed in 2022 by Capuçon and Michael Tilson Thomas with the San Francisco Symphony). Elfman’s Percussion Concerto and Wunderkammer, a concerto for orchestra written for the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain (Aug 2022), were released by Sony Classical in May 2024.

Also for the concert stage, Elfman created Danny Elfman’s Music from the Films of Tim Burton live orchestral concert, which premiered at Royal Albert Hall in 2013, and has since toured around the world and won two Emmys. He also began live performances with orchestra of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas in 2015, which has since been performed around the world.

Elfman composed the music for Cirque du Soleil’s show Iris (2011), written and directed by French choreographer Philippe Decouflé. In 2019 he composed the music for the Tony-nominated Broadway production of Taylor Mac’s Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, directed by George C. Wolfe and starring Nathan Lane.

In 2020 Elfman released his double album Big Mess, which combined edgy rock and symphonic strings, and followed it with the release of Bigger. Messier.—a genre-defying collection of remixed and reimagined versions of songs from the record featuring collaborations with musicians such as Trent Reznor, Iggy Pop, and more. The Big Mess project culminated with his critically acclaimed career-spanning 2022 Coachella concert: From Boingo, to Batman, to Big Mess and Beyond. He then presented an expanded version of the concert at back-to-back sold-out shows at the Hollywood Bowl in October 2022, in San Diego and Irvine in August 2023, and again at the Hollywood Bowl in 2024.

Sandy Cameron has performed at the White Nights Festival, the Kennedy Center, David Geffen Hall, the Elbphilharmonie, and the Sydney Opera House. In 2017, she gave the world premiere of Eleven Eleven, the violin concerto written for her by Danny Elfman. In 2018, she recorded the piece for Sony Classical with John Mauceri and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Other stage appearances include Bach by Beltrami, Cirque du Soleil, Tan Dun’s Martial Arts Trilogy, Chris Botti, and a number of Disney productions at the Hollywood Bowl and in international arenas. Cameron is also featured as a soloist on soundtracks for film, television, and video games. She plays a Pietro Guarneri violin, made in Venice ca. 1735, on extended loan through the generous efforts of the Stradivari Society of Chicago. She makes her San Francisco Symphony debut with this program.

A native of Hong Kong, Jenny Wong is Chorus Director of the San Francisco Symphony and associate artistic director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Her conducting engagements have included the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella Series, Los Angeles Opera Orchestra, Pasadena Symphony and Pops, the Industry, Long Beach Opera, Phoenix Chorale, and Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles. In 2021, Wong was one of nine national recipients of Opera America’s inaugural Opera Grants for Women Stage Directors and Conductors.

As Chorus Director, Wong has worked with former SF Symphony Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen and Music Director Laureate Michael Tilson Thomas, as well as numerous guest conductors. She has also prepared choruses for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony, working with conductors Gustavo Dudamel, Susanna Mälkki, Jonathan Cohen, and Osmo Vänskä, among many others. Wong led the SF Symphony Chorus for the Deutsche Grammophon recording of Kaija Sariaaho’s Adriana Mater, which won the 2025 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording, and helped prepare the Los Angeles Master Chorale for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, which won the 2022 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance. Together with Grant Gershon and the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Wong was also awarded the 2022 American Prize in Choral Performance in the Professional Division. She recently extended her contract as SF Symphony Chorus Director through the 2028–29 season.