Barrier-breaking China-born female conductor to lead the Seattle Symphony

NEW YORK – Xian Zhang, a renowned conductor who has helped bring New Jersey Symphony to new heights over the past eight years, will be Seattle Symphony’s next music director, the orchestra announced last week.

When she takes the podium in 2025, the 51-year-old will be the first woman and the first person of colour to lead the Seattle Symphony in its 121-year history, and one of only two women leading a top-tier US orchestra. The other is France’s Nathalie Stutzmann, the Atlanta Symphony’s music director since 2022.

Zhang, who was born in Dandong, China, and moved to the US in 1998, said she would work to attract new audiences in Seattle, including more young professionals, families and people of colour.

“My goal is to have the symphony become even more of a musical icon and a magnet for the city,” she said. “We need to be more obvious and attractive.”

Zhang emerged as a favourite because of her impeccable technique and her warm relationship with the orchestra’s musicians and audiences, said Mr Krishna Thiagarajan, the orchestra’s president and chief executive.

Zhang made her debut with the Seattle Symphony in 2008 and has been a regular in recent years, earning praise from critics and audience members.

“There’s an electricity between her and the orchestra, and an electricity between her and the audience,” Mr Thiagarajan said. “You can feel it in the hall.”

Zhang will arrive in Seattle after a turbulent few years for the orchestra.

In 2022, the ensemble’s previous music director, Danish conductor Thomas Dausgaard, abruptly resigned, saying he felt “not safe” amid a strained relationship with the orchestra’s managers.

It was an unusually bitter dispute, forcing the orchestra to scramble mid-season to find replacements and begin a search for a new leader.

And the orchestra, like many arts organisations, has been dealing with the continuing effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Subscriptions, once an important source of revenue, have fallen to 6,583 in 2024, compared with 8,757 in 2019. The number of performances remains slightly below pre-pandemic levels: 176 this season, compared with 179 in 2018-19.

But the orchestra has seen signs of progress. Attendance at concerts was about 70 per cent last season, compared with 59 per cent before the pandemic. And fund-raising has been strong: Donations totalled about US$19 million (S$24.8 million) in 2023, compared with about US$12 million in 2019.

Mr Thiagarajan said he was confident the ensemble was now on the right track.

“With Xian joining us,” he said, “I am very optimistic that we’re not just going to turn around, but we’re going to start a new era for the Seattle Symphony.”

Zhang helped the Seattle Symphony get through the turmoil of the pandemic, when the ensemble was separated from Dausgaard, 61, because of travel restrictions.

She was one of the first conductors to return to the stage with the orchestra in 2020, leading a streamed programme of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven from Benaroya Hall, the ensemble’s home. And in autumn 2021, when the orchestra resumed live performances before full audiences, Zhang was on the podium.

Zhang began studying the piano when she was three. Her father, an instrument maker, built her a piano, since they were hard to find in China at the end of the Cultural Revolution.

At 20, she made her professional debut conducting Mozart’s The Marriage Of Figaro in Beijing. She got her big break in 2002, when she shared first prize in the inaugural Maazel/Vilar Conductors’ Competition at Carnegie Hall and became an assistant conductor at the New York Philharmonic.

Zhang is only the third woman to lead a top-tier US orchestra (the designation is based on budget). Marin Alsop was the first – she led the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra for 14 years before stepping down in 2021.

There has been some progress recently for female conductors. South Korean conductor Eun Sun Kim has been music director of the San Francisco Opera since 2021; and at the Metropolitan Opera this season, five of 18 productions will be led by women.

Zhang has said that as an Asian woman in conducting, she can feel a bit like an “endangered species” and has sometimes had difficulty persuading male musicians to take her seriously.

She plans to lead a bicoastal life over the next years. She will continue to serve as music director of the New Jersey Symphony at least through the 2027-28 season, when her contract expires. She will serve as music director designate in Seattle this season before beginning an initial five-year contract as music director in the 2025-26 season. NYTIMES