“Chinese American conductor Xian Zhang, music director of the New Jersey Symphony through 2023-24, has been appointed principal guest conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra starting in 2020,” writes Susan Elliott in Tuesday’s (8/13) Musical America (subscription required). Zhang, who will succeed Andrew Davis in Melbourne, “made her debut with the MSO in 2018 and will return in fall 2020 to lead Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, as part of the worldwide Beethoven 250-year anniversary celebrations. She’ll also conduct the Australian premiere of Choral Concerto Nine, a response to Beethoven 9 by MSO Artistic Ambassador Tan Dun, and an MSO co-commission with the Philharmonic Society of London, which commissioned the original 9th. Since becoming the first woman appointed to the conducting staff of the New York Philharmonic, in 2002, Zhang has been a regular guest conductor of the London Symphony and Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and has appeared with the Rotterdam Philharmonic, Gothenburg Symphony, and others…. Born in Dandong, China, Zhang … trained at Beijing’s Central Conservatory. [After] moving to the U.S. in 1998 … she studied conducting at University of Cincinnati’s Conservatory of Music…. While still a doctoral student, Zhang was the youngest faculty member ever hired by the school.”
Posted August 15, 2019
