Music for Families

A passionate communicator, Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser brings clarity and meaning to the concert hall, fostering deep connections between audiences and performers. He has been the San Francisco Symphony’s Resident Conductor of Engagement and Education since 2021. Bartholomew-Poyser is concurrently the Barrett Principal Education Conductor and Community Ambassador of the Toronto Symphony, Artist in Residence and Community Ambassador of Symphony Nova Scotia, and Principal Youth Conductor and Artistic Partner of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra. He previously served as assistant conductor of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony and associate conductor of the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra. Bartholomew-Poyser has performed with the Detroit Symphony, Carnegie Hall Link-Up Orchestra, Canadian Opera Company, Vancouver Symphony, Edmonton Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, Chicago Philharmonic, was cover conductor with the Washington National Opera in 2020, and was music director of the Kennedy Center Summer Music Institute in 2022.

Recently, Bartholomew-Poyser debuted with the New York Philharmonic and New Jersey Symphony in addition to making his debut at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in an all-Tchaikovsky program. Host of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s weekly radio show Centre Stage, he also serves on the board of the Conductor’s Retreat at Medomak. He is the subject of a multi award–winning CBC documentary Disruptor Conductor, focusing on his efforts to extend the boundaries of the orchestral music world through concerts for neurodiverse, incarcerated, African diaspora, and LGBTQ2S+ populations.

Bartholomew-Poyser earned his bachelor’s degree in music performance and education from the University of Calgary and his master of philosophy in performance from the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England.

John Wilson frequently performs as pianist with the San Francisco Symphony and San Diego Symphony and serves as principal keyboard for the Marin Symphony. In 2026–27 he gives the Bay Area premiere of Caroline Shaw’s piano concerto Watermark and appears as soloist in Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the San Francisco Philharmonic. He has performed Philip Glass’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Chamber Orchestra of New York at Carnegie Hall and Beethoven’s Triple Concerto at the Sun Valley Music Festival, and has toured with the San Francisco Symphony under Michael Tilson Thomas and Esa-Pekka Salonen. Wilson performed on the Grammy-winning San Francisco Symphony recordings Meditations on Rilke and Adriana Mater. His Avie Records debut featured the world premiere of Michael Tilson Thomas’s Upon Further Reflection; he also appears on Pentatone’s Grace: The Music of Michael Tilson Thomas. He has premiered works by MTT, John Adams, Steve Reich, Timo Andres, and Gabriela Lena Frank. Wilson is a Steinway Artist.

Elizabeth Dorman is a prizewinner of the 2018 Leipzig International Bach Competition and the 2017 Pro Musicis Father Merlet Award. She has appeared as a soloist with the Louisville Orchestra, Leipzig Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra, Santa Rosa Symphony, California Symphony, Vallejo Symphony, San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra, Folsom Lake Symphony, Stanford Summer Symphony, Symphony Parnassus, and in interdisciplinary projects at New World Symphony. She also appears frequently as a keyboardist at the San Francisco Symphony. She has recorded for Navona and Delos records, including as a soloist with Santa Rosa Symphony. She was awarded a doctor of musical arts from Stony Brook University, where she studied with Gilbert Kalish.