As Chorus Director for the San Francisco Symphony (2007-2021), Ragnar Bohlin prepared the SFS Chorus for some of the world’s greatest conductors, including Michael Tilson Thomas, Herbert Blomstedt, Charles Dutoit, Valery Gergiev, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Alan Gilbert. He has also conducted the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus in such pieces as Orff’s Carmina Burana, Handel’s Messiah, Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and Mass in B Minor, and Poulenc’s Figure Humaine. His outstanding work has been recognized with a Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance for Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony.

Bohlin has been invited to appear as guest conductor with orchestras and choirs worldwide. He has made many guest appearances with the Swedish Radio Choir, recording two CDs with them and touring the US to great critical acclaim. He has been guest conductor with Chanticleer, the BBC Singers, Eric Ericson Chamber Choir, Royal Philharmonic Choir, Opera Chorus of Stockholm and Formosa Singers of Taiwan, among many others. Orchestral conducting appearances have been with symphonies in São Paulo, Edmonton, Helsingborg, Stavanger Madrid, Shanghai and Malmö.

In 2014 he founded the San Francisco-based 24-voice professional chamber choir Cappella SF, with whom he has made four professional recordings and premiered over ten new choral works.

Bohlin has taught at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Royal Academy in Stockholm, and was a 2008 visiting professor at Indiana University. He has been awarded the prestigious Johannes Norrby Award for expanding the frontiers of Swedish choral music-making and Chorus America’s Michael Korn Award for the Development of the Professional Choral Art. Conducting studies were with the renowned choir director Eric Ericson, piano with Peter Feuchtwanger in London and voice with the great Swedish tenor Nicolai Gedda. He has also appeared as an oratorio tenor.