Getting to Know Seattle Symphony Associate Conductor Sunny Xia

By Leilani Polk

The Seattle Symphony’s 2022/2023 season proved to be a rather busy one for incoming Douglas F. King Assistant Conductor Sunny Xia. Her schedule included conducting all four of the Family Concerts (Nature Resounds in November, The Snowman in December, The Peasant Prince in April and Dances Around the World in May), four Community Concerts (including Side by Side concerts with Yakima Music en Acción at Benaroya Hall, SYSO’s My Southeast ensemble at Aki Kurose Middle School in Rainier Valley, and with Key to Change studio students in Renton); four Link Up concerts, which brought more than 4,000 elementary school children back to the Hall after a more than three-year hiatus; the 15th annual Celebrate Asia concert; and the Merriman-Ross Family Young Composers Workshop Concert, featuring 10 world premieres written for full orchestra by workshop students who Sunny helped mentor. She called the workshop “one of a kind” and says it’s not something that she or any of her workshop colleagues take for granted. “It is so valuable and immensely helpful to younger composers who are just starting out, to have access to an ensemble, let alone of this caliber, to perform their music. And that’s something that I’m so grateful that we are doing.”

All of this work was in addition to her duties assisting the Masterworks Series conductors as needed and being ready to jump onto any of the season’s 21 Masterworks Series programs in case a conductor fell ill or couldn’t make it for any reason.

Luckily, there was no need for an emergency Sunny takeover but plenty of opportunities for her to work with conductors she respected and admired. Most exciting, in the 2023/2024 season, her title shifts to Douglas F. King Associate Conductor and she’ll take on the brand-new Playlist Series in addition to all her original conducting duties. More from Sunny below.

Talk to me about your experiences with the students in the Young Composers Workshop.

In addition to working with Angelique Poteat, who was our Artist in Residence, the students also had a series of workshops with various people in the organization, myself included. And in that particular workshop, we talked about various things that a composer must be involved in, in the process. And that is: How do you sit in a rehearsal and take notes? How do you react when you listen to your piece for the first time and not be overwhelmed, while processing the sounds intelligently and critically, in order to be able to give feedback to the conductor and the musicians? One can imagine writing or putting notes down on a page that will be played by actual musicians for the first time in many of their lives, to have something of their artistic output being performed, is nerve-wracking. But that is the role of myself and Angelique in this context, to guide them and to help them to grow in every way they can.

If there’s one thing I really wanted to impart to the young composers, it is that their success as a composer in any situation depends mostly on how much care they take with the preparation of their music, because with the utmost care, the musicians are set up for success.

Tell me about August Baik. I see his work from the 2022/2023 season Young Composers Workshop Concert, Chuseok Overture for Orchestra, has been added to the Celebrate Asia program in 2024?

We are very excited about bringing that to a wider audience. It was very, very, very well written.

August struck me as somebody who is very thoughtful about the way he composes. We had a conversation backstage about the form of his piece. To me, it’s very clearly thought-out. It’s very intuitive to follow. And I think it was really well received by the audience and the musicians alike.

As a conductor, after I ran through August’s piece, and when he came on stage with us, I had a feeling that he had an extremely sharp ear and he knew exactly what he wanted to hear. The feedback that he was able to give me and the musicians was very detailed and very approachable, and we were able to adjust almost immediately to make a change for him.

How do you know you as a conductor were successful on a given night? What about for the Young Composers Workshop Concert?

To conduct a concert of 10 world premieres, it’s not something that I would sign up for! But I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the journey of working with these composers.

In the rehearsal setting, to me, success is defined by getting all the tempos right, because, in this case, there were 10 different pieces and all of them had very different characters. And in some of them, there were various tempos that I just had to kind of pull out of nowhere, because these are brand-new pieces that nobody really knows. So the conductor is the first checkpoint to guarantee the success of the performance by picking the right speed for the music.

Do you like new music? Do you like conducting premieres?

I really love conducting new music, and especially world premieres, where I get to work with the composers themselves. Because there is so much possibility. You get the score for the first time, you go through it meticulously, and then you start a collaborative process where you are very much part of this, a creator of this process, as the composer. And it’s so much fun.

What are some of your other conducting highlights this season?

There weren’t that many surprises, which is probably a good thing. But that’s why every single day is a highlight, because I must be on every single day, in case something happens, to be prepared, to be able to step in. That’s the other part of the Assistant Conductor's job. That’s the assisting, the covering. So I have to be on every day in order to be ready at a moment’s notice and know pretty much all of the Masterworks, all of the classical shows. That’s actually the most stressful part of the job.

So the conducting that I do, because I know when I’m conducting, what I’m conducting, I have time to prepare for those. And those concerts are, of course, always fun. And working with an orchestra of this caliber is always a great learning experience. They are incredibly supportive of what I do, and for that reason, I find myself very lucky to be surrounded by just the best colleagues — the most supportive, the most inviting.

For me, the highlight is just getting to know each individual member of the orchestra, and staff members when I can. I enjoy very much getting to know people. And it’s a great family.

You did a lot of work with youth before you came here, and you have worked with youth in many of our programs here. Can you tell me a little how it’s different working with kids versus adults?

I enjoy working with young musicians so much. It’s not only a lot of fun, but I do it with people who really care, my colleagues. I think we’re able to lend a lot to those organizations and help those young people in the earlier stages of their learning. And that’s something that’s very special about the Assistant Conductor’s work.

I get asked every now and then, ‘Wouldn’t you prefer to be conducting a professional ensemble every day?’ Of course, I enjoy working with professionals. I enjoy learning from them also. But it’s such a special position to be in, to have the opportunity to work with young people, to help them learn, to be a teacher. 

These kids are likely learning a lot, but you guys are probably also learning much from them as well.

Absolutely. Working with kids reminds us of the freshness, the spark of curiosity, the passion and the purpose, and just how natural and pure it is to play music. And the bonds they build with their friends through music, it’s all really precious and yes, inspiring to myself and I’m sure to my colleagues.

Tell me a little bit about conducting community concerts…

Much depends on the community we go to, and often we partner with community organizations like Key to Change and YAMA and so forth. The people who are connected to those organizations come out to those concerts. The family, parents, grandparents, relatives, extended relatives — they’re so supportive to young people, and you can tell from the screaming in the hall. I think that’s beautiful to see and we need to be doing that — that is what we are able to offer as a large organization.

Community engagement is a big part of what you’ve been doing here.

Yes, and I really love doing it. I think that it’s the best way to serve our core mission, but also to build future audiences. This is how you engage young people and share with them what it means to play music at a high level, what it means to share music with your friends, your family. And that is the way we cultivate that next generation of music lovers, musicians or even the general public.

We had a lot of impressive guest conductors last season. Can you tell me a little bit about your experiences with them? Did anyone leave a big impression on you?

It was a very special season, in that I got to know so many different personalities, great musicians, coming from different backgrounds, having their own contributions and their own specialties, and bringing those to the orchestra. And some of the elder generation of conductors even had time to mentor me. If I had questions, they guided me in conducting or analyzing this piece or that piece. And oftentimes I was able to pick their brain on what they do. When Osmo Vänskä was here, I would say, ‘Osmo, why did you do this? Why did you switch the soloists’ places? Why did you put the horns and trumpets on the left?’

I’m so thankful that I’m able to learn from these people.

I know you worked with Marin Alsop in the Peabody Conducting Workshop. What was it like reuniting with her later?

It was great to see her in a professional context and not just as a teacher. There’s so much more that you are able to gain seeing her in action that, of course, she’s preached to all of her students and participants of her workshops. But having had that experience and coming back to that week with Marin, I was able to pick up on more things that she taught.

Is there any specific advice that anyone gave you, conductors who said something that they really stayed with you, someone who really influenced you this season?

I think the biggest influence to me this season had to be [Conductor Emeritus] Ludovic Morlot. He was here twice and also at the Seattle Opera [for Camille Saint-Saëns’ Samson and Delilah]. He was a mentor even before I came here, and he’s always so generous with his time. He really is a teacher figure to me at this point in my career. And something that struck me about him is that he’s just a very down-to-earth person. There is really no ego involved as a conductor. That’s rare.

That was one big takeaway from working with him — that you don’t have to have a big ego to be a conductor.

What are you looking forward to that’s coming up in the 2023/2024 next season?

I would have to say the Playlist Series. It's brand new and we’re actually still in the process of shaping and finalizing the programs. It’s just immensely exciting to me to say I’ll be conducting some of the pieces. I’ll be working with Mahani [Teave], Noah [Geller] and Conrad [Tao]. Each of the concerts include a Mozart concerto by the soloist, so in many of those cases, I’ll be conducting. I’m looking forward to that collaboration, which is pretty in-depth for a concerto.

Any conductors you're looking forward to working with again and any other programs that you’re excited about checking out as an audience member?

Alpesh Chauhan and Kahchun Wong are returning. I’m excited to see what Kahchun’s really known for, Mahler 3. He was the winner of the Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition and Mahler 3 is my favorite symphony, so I’m looking forward to experiencing it.

I hear the last Family program of the 2022/2023 season [Dances Around the World] was basically a program that you had come up with fully yourself. How did you approach programming for a family concert?

Dances Around the World was a program that I created as part of my audition for this position. I sent an email prior to coming in, of my proposals for a family concert, an education concert, and that was something that drew Jeremy's attention. [Jérémy Jolley is the Seattle Symphony’s Senior Director of Education & Community Engagement.] And they decided to almost program it fully.

Much of the music is about dance. And to have a concert of dance music, I thought, would be really appealing to kids.

Was there dancing?

Yes, there was dancing that was led by our host [Alexandria J. Henderson]. All these dance moves to go along with certain passages. It was a concert hall of dancing kids! [Florence Price’s] Dances in the Canebrakes, [Ruth Crawford Seeger’s] Rissolty Rossolty … There were lyrics to go along and our host also taught the lyrics to the audience.

Sunny kicks off the 2023/2024 season conducting three programs that are all coming up this October: Mahani Teave’s Playlist (October 13 & 14, 2023), the Día de Los Muertos Family Concert (Octobe 14, 2023), and a Community Concert featuring students of Key to Change Studio (October 24, at Renton IKEA Performing Arts Center). She will lead a Conducting Clinic co-hosted by the Seattle Symphony, Washington Music Educators Association (WMEA) and Central Washington University (CWU) at the 2024 WMEA State Conference.