The Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) Names Jean-Sébastien Vallée BSO Director of Choruses and Conductor of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus (TFC)

The Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) today announced the appointment of Jean-Sébastien Vallée as the BSO Director of Choruses and Conductor of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus (TFC) with the start of the 2026-27 season.

Vallée becomes the all-volunteer group's third director since its founding in 1970.

Vallée, who served as one of several guest choral directors in 2025-26, was at Tanglewood on the final weekend of the BSO’s summer season to lead the TFC in a Prelude concert in Ozawa Hall featuring Martín Palmeri’s Misa a Buenos Aires and in two BSO performances in the Shed that offered Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, Brahms’s “Selig sind, die da Leid tragen” from Ein deutsches Requiem, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. He also directed the TFC’s performances with the BSO in the same Beethoven and Bernstein works at Symphony Hall last spring.

He looks forward to upcoming programs in the 2026-27 season, including Haydn’s The Creation, the world premiere of Golijov’s Creation, the BSO’s concert-opera performance of Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 3, among others.

Read the BSO's press release here.

With the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, 2026. Photo: Hilary Scott.