The Board of California Bach Society is excited to announce new artistic leadership for CBS. We want to express our appreciation and gratitude to Dr. Paul Flight for the significant musical contributions he made during his 17-year tenure with the choir and for the many memorable concerts we presented under his direction. We wish Paul well in his future endeavors.
Beginning this fall, acclaimed and beloved Bay Area choral conductor Magen Solomon will join us as interim artistic director for the 2024-2025 season. Because Magen will not be available for our December concert set, we are thrilled to welcome Derek Tam as a guest conductor for that set.
We are looking forward to taking CBS in some new and exciting directions—but we also want to assure our audiences and supporters that we will continue to present the exquisite repertoire and innovative programming you love! We thank you for your support, and we hope you’ll join us for what promises to be another outstanding CBS season.
Magen Solomon
Interim Artistic Director, 2024-2025 Season
An innovative teacher and conductor, Magen Solomon is active across the US and abroad as a clinician, teacher, and guest conductor. She has been engaged with early music as a conductor, singer, scholar, and editor for over four decades and has collaborated on performances of major choral-orchestral works with Michael Tilson Thomas, Kent Nagano, Nicolas McGegan, and Helmuth Rilling, among others.
Artistic director of the San Francisco Bach Choir since 2014, Dr. Solomon directed the Oakland Symphony Chorus for 12 years, and the Stockton Chorale for 4 years. She taught at the University of Southern California from 2004-2010, and directed choral activities at Santa Clara University, UC-Berkeley, and several other colleges and universities. Chair of ACDA’s Julius Herford Dissertation Prize Committee since 2007, she has also published a scholarly performing edition of 16th-century German partsongs with A-R Editions.
Recognized as a champion of contemporary choral works, Dr. Solomon avidly cultivates engagements with living composers to bridge the gulf between audience, composers, and performers. She has been the artistic director of San Francisco Choral Artists since 1995, during which time SFCA has premiered over 300 works, won several national prizes, and has established six different programs to support and promote new composition.
Derek Tam
Guest Conductor, December 2024 concert set
Praised not only for his “deft” conducting (San Francisco Chronicle) but also as “a master of [the harpsichord]” (San Francisco Classical Voice) and “the fortepianist of the beguiling fingers” (Bloomington Herald-Times), Derek Tam appears regularly throughout the Bay Area and beyond as a conductor and historical keyboardist.
He is the executive director of the San Francisco Early Music Society, a major advocate for early music in the United States, and serves as the artistic director of the biennial Berkeley Festival & Exhibition, an internationally-renowned celebration of early music. Tam is the most recent past president of the board of Early Music America, a national organization dedicated to strengthening historical performance.