Keeping Score

Keeping Score is the San Francisco Symphony’s multi-year program designed to make classical music more accessible to people of all ages and musical backgrounds through television, the web, radio, DVDs, and in the classroom.

Keeping Score is anchored by a national PBS television series that debuted November 2, 2006; an interactive website, to explore and learn about music; a national radio series hosted by Michael Tilson Thomas that premiered on public radio stations in April 2007; documentary and live performance DVDs; and an education program for K-12 schools to integrate classical music into core subjects. Its goals are to use media in its most public and accessible forms to show that classical music can speak to everyone and to instill a lifelong love of music.

Television Episodes

The Keeping Score television series, three one-hour documentary-style episodes and two live-concert programs, began airing on PBS stations in early November 2006. They have been compared to Leonard Bernstein’s Young People's Concerts which aired in the 1960s. Future programs were scheduled to air in 2009 and 2011. The three episodes explore the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, Igor Stravinsky, and Aaron Copland. The series pilot, featuring a comprehensive look at mounting the San Francisco Symphony's performance of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4, aired in June 2004.