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.

Celebrating over a decade of artistic leadership with the San Francisco Girls Chorus, Ms. Sainte-Agathe welcomes SFGC collaborators including the SF Opera, San Francisco Symphony, GRAMMY Award-winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer, Opera Parallele, and folk sensation Aoife O’Donovan. She joined Philharmonia Baroque as their Chorale Director in 2022 and was featured in the 2022 book Music Mavens: 15 Women of Note published by the Chicago Review Press. Ms. Sainte-Agathe regularly joined forces with GRAMMY Award-winning Kronos Quartet.

Further highlights of her illustrious career 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.