Aesthetic Apparatus Creates Hand-Printed Screenprints for the San Francisco Symphony
Aesthetic Apparatus has created a series of original hand-printed screenprints for the San Francisco Symphony’s Epic Stories series, connecting the Minneapolis studio’s long tradition of handmade concert posters with one of America’s major orchestras.
The Epic Stories collection brings together three major works from the San Francisco Symphony’s 2026–27 season:
John Adams’s Doctor Atomic Symphony
Sergei Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet
Richard Strauss’s An Alpine Symphony.
The campaign itself is built around “the drama of storytelling” and “the power of a symphony orchestra”, moving from the turmoil surrounding the atomic bomb to Shakespearean tragedy and Strauss’s monumental journey through the Alps.
Original screenprints, printed by hand
Aesthetic Apparatus is the Minneapolis design, illustration and printmaking studio of Michael Byzewski.
Screenprinting has been central to Michael’s practice for more than two decades. Rather than treating the poster simply as a digital campaign image, Aesthetic Apparatus has retained the physical process of making prints by hand. The studio says that around 99% of its concert posters are still screenprinted in-house at the Aesthetic Apparatus studio.
That makes the San Francisco Symphony project a particularly fitting commission: original concert artwork produced through the same handcrafted printing process Michael has long used for bands, musicians and independent venues.
For people searching for original screenprints, handmade concert posters and contemporary screenprinted art, Aesthetic Apparatus sits firmly within that tradition. The studio also maintains its own collection of original poster and art prints, with individual works specifying their inks, paper stocks and screenprint processes.
See Aesthetic Apparatus concert posters
Epic Stories at the San Francisco Symphony
The three Epic Stories programmes take place at Davies Symphony Hall, 201 Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, the home of the San Francisco Symphony.
John Adams: Doctor Atomic Symphony
29–31 October 2026
John Adams’s Doctor Atomic began as a 2005 opera about J. Robert Oppenheimer, Los Alamos and the tense period immediately before the first atomic bomb test at Trinity. The background material for Epic Stories describes the work as focusing on the enormous stress and anxiety experienced by the scientists preparing for that first nuclear test.
For the San Francisco Symphony, Elim Chan conducts the first SF Symphony performances of Adams’s orchestral Doctor Atomic Symphony, alongside works by Brahms, Mendelssohn and Arvo Pärt. Violinist Renaud Capuçon and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus also appear. Performances take place on October 29, 30 and 31, 2026.
John Adams: Doctor Atomic Symphony poster by Aesthetic Apparatus
Sergei Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet
13–15 November 2026
Shakespeare’s story of Romeo and Juliet has inspired composers for centuries. The Epic Stories concept places that universally familiar story of love, rivalry and tragedy within the wider idea of music as storytelling.
For this San Francisco Symphony programme it is Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet score, rather than the Berlioz work referenced in the early background notes.
Conducted by Marie Jacquot, the concerts feature selections from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, alongside Augusta Holmès’s Andromède and Respighi’s Concerto gregoriano, with violinist Sayaka Shoji. Performances run November 13–15, 2026.
Richard Strauss: An Alpine Symphony
27–29 May 2027
Richard Strauss’s An Alpine Symphony grew partly from the composer’s own fascination with the mountains. As a boy, Strauss experienced an Alpine expedition in which his climbing party lost its way and was caught in a storm. He later built a home in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria, surrounded by views of the Alps.
The enormous orchestral work follows a mountain journey from night through sunrise, ascent, summit, storm and descent.
At the San Francisco Symphony, Daniele Rustioni conducts Strauss’s An Alpine Symphony alongside works by Boccherini/Berio and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, with violinist Francesca Dego. Performances take place May 27–29, 2027.
About Aesthetic Apparatus
Led by Michael Byzewski, Aesthetic Apparatus is a Minneapolis graphic design, illustration and printmaking studio with deep roots in independent music and the American gig-poster tradition.
Over more than two decades, its music work has included The White Stripes, The Black Keys, The Dead Weather, Cake, Spoon, The Kills, The Decemberists, Dinosaur Jr, Guided By Voices, Bob Mould, The Hold Steady, Heart and Frank Black, alongside later posters for artists including Billie Eilish, Arctic Monkeys, Blink-182 and The Who.
Michael has also taken that relationship with American music history beyond individual gigs. For the release of the Muscle Shoals documentary, Aesthetic Apparatus was commissioned to reinterpret 12 record sleeves for landmark tracks recorded in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, including music by Etta James, The Staple Singers, Paul Simon and Lynyrd Skynyrd.
The studio has worked more widely across publishing, advertising, packaging and culture for clients including The Criterion Collection, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Nike, Ray-Ban and Warner Bros. Records.
But concert posters remain central to Aesthetic Apparatus. Michael describes them as part of the studio’s “DNA”, with 99% of the concert posters he designs still screenprinted in-house at the Minneapolis studio. That physical, self-produced approach has been there from the beginning: each colour is individually pulled through a screen, layer by layer, creating an object that is genuinely printed by hand rather than simply reproduced digitally.
That makes the new work for the San Francisco Symphony a natural extension of a practice that has spent decades turning live music into original, collectible print.
Visit Dutch Uncle / Aesthetic Apparatus
About the San Francisco Symphony
Founded in 1911, the San Francisco Symphony has been a central part of the city’s musical life for more than a century. Its home, Davies Symphony Hall, opened in 1980 and remains the orchestra’s principal performance venue.
Bringing Aesthetic Apparatus into the 2026–27 season connects that established orchestral institution with a very different American music tradition: the handmade, limited-edition screenprinted concert poster.
At a time when so much campaign artwork exists primarily on screens, these remain physical prints — designed, screenprinted and produced by hand in Michael’s Minneapolis studio.
