Music is a universal language. Everyone should have the opportunity to hear all that is being said.

With a $10 million challenge grant from the Haas, Jr. Fund, the San Francisco Symphony has embarked on an ambitious multiyear, multimedia project called Keeping Score that is aimed at bringing the joy of classical music to millions of people.

At its core, Keeping Score is about providing access. First, by making music accessible on a personal level through powerful storytelling about common human emotions expressed through classical music. And then by making these stories accessible through the power of multimedia: public television, public radio, public schools and the web.

“The Fund started conversations with the Symphony in 1999,” says Fund president Ira Hirschfield. “At the time, I asked the Symphony how the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund might help bring the talents of its gifted conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas, and its remarkable orchestra, to a national and international audience.”

“How could the Symphony make music more accessible — not only to those who already love classical music, but especially to those who might not have the opportunity to enter a concert hall? How could it stretch and challenge itself to be an even greater institution with deep roots in the Bay Area, but with a reach that spans the entire country and other parts of the world?”

From those early conversations, the idea for Keeping Score was conceived. Keeping Score uses television, radio and a website along with education and outreach programs to reach those who love music and want to connect in deeper ways. It also aspires to reach those whose exposure to classical music may be limited. A second and third series are slated for 2008 and 2010.

• The television series began airing nationally on PBS stations in November 2006. The first season, Keeping Score: Revolutions in Music, explores the music of Beethoven, Stravinsky and Copland in three one-hour programs that look at how and why these composers were able to write such remarkable, revolutionary works.
• “The MTT Files,” is an eight-part radio program that will air in 2007. In this series, Michael Tilson Thomas will create original and personal radio programs as he pulls out some of his “files” — files full of ideas about music and art, full of reminiscences of the legendary artists he’s known throughout his career.
• The website, keepingscore.org, provides an interactive online experience designed to give people of all musical backgrounds a way to explore the music and stories behind the works in much greater depth, and at their own pace.
• The Keeping Score education program trains teachers in K-12 classrooms to integrate classical music into core subjects such as science, math and history.

Read the latest reviews:

"The field of classical music has long been waiting for some musician to come along who could use television with [Leonard] Bernstein’s galvanizing impact. The closest, it seemed, has been the dynamic maestro Michael Tilson Thomas, a natural who has masterminded some impressive shows. Until recently, though, TV had not been a central component of Mr. Thomas’s work.

That has now changed."

— Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times

"Giving first-rate, exciting orchestral performances is job one for Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony. But as the cultural landscape continues to shift around us, it becomes ever clearer that classical music needs something more.

And so we have "Keeping Score," the orchestra's multiyear, multimedia project designed to help folks learn just what this is all about -- music appreciation, more or less, except livelier and more engrossing than most of what passes under that name."

— Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle