Chan, 39, is set to begin a six-year contract in September 2027, succeeding Esa-Pekka Salonen, whose own tenure reshaped what the orchestra played and how it played it. The appointment was not a surprise to anyone who had been in the hall when Chan was on the podium. Regulars in the orchestra seats described a particular quality of attention between her and the players — the kind of communication that doesn't require the music to stop.

"It was like her and the orchestra were psychically connected," wrote one concertgoer on the r/sanfrancisco thread that lit up after the announcement. "Truly magic." Another commenter noted the organizational logic of the choice: a conductor in her late thirties, with an international profile still building, who could grow into the role rather than arrive already at a peak.

The Symphony has been navigating a complicated few years — pandemic closures, a renegotiated labor contract, the lingering question of what comes after a music director as distinctive as Salonen. Chan inherits an orchestra that has not settled into complacency, which is either a challenge or an opportunity depending on where you're sitting.

Meanwhile, over at the hall's smaller stages and in the broader ecosystem of Bay Area new music, composer Tyler Taylor has been doing something almost contrary in spirit — trying to wedge the saxophone, that perpetual outsider of the orchestral world, back into the concert program. The two stories aren't unrelated: a major institution naming a first, and a composer working the margins, are both arguments about what the Symphony is for.

Anyone walking past Davies on Van Ness between now and 2027 will see Salonen's name give way to Chan's in the program books — a transition slow enough to watch, block by block, season by season.