Artistic director

Valérie Sainte-Agathe, Artistic Director, has prepared and conducted the San Francisco Girls Chorus since 2013, including performances with renowned ensembles throughout the United States and beyond. Through transformative choral music training, education, and performance, Ms. Sainte-Agathe empowers young women and champions the music of today throughout the choral world.

Now celebrating a decade of artistic leadership with the San Francisco Girls Chorus, Ms. Sainte-Agathe welcomes SFGC 2022-2023 season collaborators including GRAMMY Award-winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer, Santa Fe Opera, soprano Shawnette Sulker, composer and percussionist Susie Ibarra, and GRAMMY-nominated composer Ayanna Woods. Recent highlights include joining Philharmonia Baroque as its new Chorale Director in 2022 and featuring in the 2022 book Music Mavens: 15 Women of Note published by the Chicago Review Press. During the 2020- 2021 season, Ms. Sainte-Agathe joined forces with GRAMMY Award-winning Kronos Quartet to conduct the world premiere of At War With Ourselves - 400 Years of You by Michael Abels and continues to perform this work throughout the U.S. on tour. Ms. Sainte-Agathe also welcomed The King’s Singers and Roomful of Teeth in spring 2021, and legendary American folk-jazz vocalist Bobby McFerrin as SFGC 2021-2022 Artist-in-Residence.

Further highlights include her Carnegie Hall and Barbican Center debuts with the Philip Glass Ensemble, conducting with Michael Riesman in Glass’s Music with Changing Parts; conducting SFGC for the New York Philharmonic Biennial Festival at Lincoln Center; and collaborating with The Knights for the SHIFT Festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Her first recording as SFGC’s Music Director, Final Answer, was released on Orange Mountain Music in February 2018, and her second recording, My Outstretched Hand, was released in July 2019. She also served as Choir Master with Taylor Mac, recipient of MacArthur Foundation's "Genius Grant," for the "Holiday Sauce" production at the Curran Theater in December 2018.

Ms. Sainte-Agathe served as Music Director for the Young Singers program of the Montpellier National Symphony and Opera in France from 1998-2011, and participated in eight recordings with the Montpellier National Orchestra and The Radio France Festival.