Glenn Fischthal joined the San Francisco Symphony in 1980 and served as Principal Trumpet for twenty-four years. He currently serves as the Orchestra's Associate Principal Trumpet, occupying the Peter Pastreich Chair. A native of New York state, Mr. Fischthal earned his bachelor's degree at the Cleveland Institute of Music and continued with graduate studies at the California Institute of the Arts. His teachers have included Bernard Adelstein, Thomas Stevens, Frank Kadarabek, and Robert Nagel.

Mr. Fischthal's orchestral career began at age twenty-one, when he joined the Cleveland Orchestra on tour under the direction of George Szell and Pierre Boulez. He has been a member of the National Ballet of Canada Orchestra and Kansas City Philharmonic, and has served as principal trumpet for the Hong Kong Philharmonic, Santa Fe Opera Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, and Israel Philharmonic. During his tenure in Israel, the IPO recorded all of the Leonard Bernstein symphonies under the direction of Mr. Bernstein and made numerous recordings under the direction of Zubin Mehta.

Mr. Fischthal has been soloist with the San Francisco Symphony in trumpet concertos of Haydn and Hummel and Torelli's Sonata for Trumpet and Strings, and he has been featured in Stravinsky's L'Histoire du soldat. He has performed with the summer festival orchestras of Grand Teton and Sun Valley and has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, London, CBS Masterworks, Telarc, Nonesuch, and Philips. He is a founding member of the Bay Brass.