Welcome, Xian!

By Leilani Polk

The Seattle Symphony is elated to start our first season with Xian Zhang as our Music Director. She is not only the first woman to hold this title here but the first woman to lead a major West Coast orchestra. 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.   

Her relationship with the Seattle Symphony began 16 years ago, conducting Sergei Prokofiev’s score to the 1938 film Alexander Nevsky, in a 2008 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.   

In 2013, she led a concert of Sibelius’ Violin Concerto (with Hilary Hahn) 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 after the COVID pandemic, stepping onto the podium for 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 also 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.” 

We announced her new role with the orchestra a mere few months later, and she returned as our Music Director Designate in the 2024/2025 season to conduct two programs: Holst the Planets: An HD Odyssey, featuring the Seattle Symphony Chorale on Holst and Steven Banks on a saxophone concerto called Diaspora by American composer Billy Childs (Classical Voice International: “she brought an equal amount of orchestral color and impact … her ‘Mars’ rivaled the best recorded stereo and multi-channel recordings”); and then reunited with Hilary Hahn on our stage to tackle two giants, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and Prokofiev’s famous Fifth Symphony (Seattle Times: “She is riveting to watch; her musical results are even more riveting to hear”). 

We are overjoyed to welcome her back as our official Music Director, and are looking forward to an inspiring and electrifying season ahead. 

Music Director Xian Zhang is generously sponsored by Dr. and Mrs. Charles and Lisa Simonyi and an anonymous donor.   

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