Introducing the Seattle Symphony’s Next Music Director, Xian Zhang

By Leilani Polk

Search for Xian Zhang’s name online and you’ll find one glowing review after another praising her boundless energy; her knack for forging strong connections with musicians and vocalists; her attention to detail; her ability to conduct across centuries and styles, from orchestral to opera, from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Richard Wagner to Jennifer Higdon and Dorothy Chang; her commitment to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in the arts; and her work at raising the profile of music by women and composers of color while being a trailblazer herself.  

The Seattle Symphony is thrilled to announce that this firebrand musical figure will be our next Music Director. Xian Zhang will hold the title of Music Director Designate for the 2024/2025 season before beginning her five-year contract as the Seattle Symphony’s Music Director in September 2025. She will be the first woman to hold this title, joining us in the Symphony’s 122nd year. Exciting times are ahead, not just for coming seasons but for the future of the orchestra and the arts in Seattle overall.  

Alongside her still-active Music Director post at the New Jersey Symphony (her last season with New Jersey Symphony is 2027/2028), she is also Artistic Ambassador at the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Conductor Emeritus of Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano and a guest conductor with a jam-packed schedule that has her leading some of the greatest orchestras internationally.  

At Benaroya Hall, Xian appears as Music Director Designate twice this season: March 27, 29 & 30, 2025, to conduct Holst The Planets: An HD Odyssey, featuring stunning NASA imagery of our solar system and Steven Banks performing a new saxophone concerto, Diaspora, by American composer Billy Childs; and then for Hilary Hahn Plays Beethoven on June 12, 14 & 15, 2025, which includes Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and Prokofiev’s searing Fifth Symphony.  

Find out more about our Music Director Designate below. 

Her first instrument was a piano built by her father. 

Xian was born in China in the early 1970s during the Cultural Revolution, at a time when the classical arts and elements of Western culture were violently denounced. Her musical education started on a small organ at age 3, the sort that “you have to pedal to make the sound come out of it, like the size of a celesta?” she told Northwest Asian Weekly in an interview last year. By that time, the Cultural Revolution was over and her parents had decided she was ready to begin her musical education in earnest. But they discovered that most pianos had been destroyed. So her father, a professional luthier and self-taught pianist and clarinetist, sourced parts from a closed-down piano factory and built the shell himself. Her mother, also a pianist who never completed her education due to the Cultural Revolution, became her first teacher. 

Though she started her musical journey in China, she ultimately settled in the United States. 

Xian earned her degree from Beijing’s prestigious Central Conservatory of Music, studying conducting as early as age 16 and making her public debut at age 19, leading the China National Opera Orchestra in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. She was conductor-in-residence of the China Opera House in Beijing, and conductor of the Jinfan Chinese Orchestra before ultimately moving to the U.S. in 1998 to earn her doctorate in conducting at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.  

In 2002, she won first prize in the Maazel-Vilar Conductor’s Competition. That year also saw her appointment as the New York Philharmonic’s Assistant Conductor, subsequently becoming that orchestra’s Associate Conductor and the first holder of the Arturo Toscanini Chair.  

She has an impressive and expansive resume.  

Xian just finished her eighth season as Music Director of the New Jersey Symphony, which celebrated its centennial last season. She is the first woman to hold the position. In addition to her current and previous roles at Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (where she was Principal Guest Conductor from 2020–2024) and Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano (where she was Music Director from 2009–2016), Xian also served as Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC National Orchestra & Chorus of Wales, the first female conductor to hold a titled role with a BBC orchestra (2016–2019). Recent notable guest conducting appearances include the Metropolitan Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Boston Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestra. In fact, her Deutsche Grammophon recording with Philadelphia Orchestra and Time for Three, Letters for The Future (2022), won two GRAMMY™ awards: Best Contemporary Classical Composition (for Kevin Puts’ Contact) and Best Classical Instrumental Solo. She also remains a popular guest of the San Francisco Symphony, the London, Detroit, Baltimore, Montreal and Toronto symphony orchestras, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Belgian National Orchestra and Norwegian Opera. 

Her relationship with the Seattle Symphony began 16 years ago. 

Xian had her debut with us in 2008, conducting Sergei Prokofiev’s score to the 1938 film Alexander Nevsky, in a live-to-film presentation. “Xian Zhang’s conducting ... gave due prominence to both the lyrical and the more pervasive heroic aspects of the music,” wrote Seen and Heard International.  

She returned in 2013. That concert featured Hilary Hahn performing Sibelius’ Violin Concerto, plus Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. City Arts wrote: “Zhang, who directed this [Beethoven] without the score, is a clear, decisive conductor who uses her expressive left hand and wrist to signal nuance while keeping the beat with her right. She brought authority and propulsion to the Beethoven while using the whole dynamic range, including some remarkably beautiful soft playing from the strings.” 

Xian was the first guest conductor to join the Seattle Symphony in its return to the stage post-pandemic, leading the inaugural subscription series concert of the 2020/2021 season — which included William Grant Still’s Mother and Child and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. 

She returned a year later to conduct the 2021/2022 season Opening Night Concert; that program included the Seattle Symphony Co-commission & World Premiere of RE|Member by then-Composer in Residence Reena Esmail and Stravinsky’s The Firebird Suite (1919 version). She has since led performances of Carmina burana (in March 2023) and Copland’s Appalachian Spring (with Ray Chen performing Korngold’s Violin Concerto, in April 2024). In both instances, she filled the concert hall and impressed audiences with her ability to pair well-known works with cutting-edge contemporary pieces. 

Seen and Heard International offered a glowing review of that latter concert, as well as some precognition about Xian and the Symphony’s future: “Xian Zhang was a revelation in her latest appearance with the Seattle Symphony, and the two concerts she will conduct next year should be required listening. They promise to be equally engaging. Zhang’s juxtaposition of Copland, Korngold and Chang created a moving tribute to the power of place and memory, and her achievement whetted my appetite for the possibility of her leading the orchestra permanently.” 

Xian Zhang’s position is generously underwritten as the Harriet Overton Stimson Music Director. 

Xian Zhang’s performances during the 2024/2025 season are generously sponsored by Heidi Charleson and Lou Woodworth.