From left: Yiran Zhao and Jakub Przybycień.
The Boston Symphony Orchestra has appointed Yiran Zhao and Jakub Przybycień as assistant conductors, starting with the 2026–27 season for two-year terms. They succeed Samy Rachid and Anna Handler, whose tenures end at the conclusion of the Tanglewood season this summer. Zhao and Przybycień will make their BSO debuts as assistant conductors during the 2027 Tanglewood season.
Born and raised in China, Yiran Zhao was a 2025 Conducting Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center (TMC), where she conducted in 15 concerts leading the TMC Orchestra, vocal fellows, and chamber ensembles. She will make her BSO debut at a concert shared with Music Director Andris Nelsons and fellow 2025 TMC Conducting Fellow Leonard Weiss in April 2026, followed by an engagement with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra’s Mendelssohn Academy in June 2026. A composer, pianist, and singer, Zhao is a national winner of the 2024 American Prize for Composition. A recipient of a Master of Music in Choral Conducting from the Yale School of Music, Zhao is currently a soprano with Apollo’s Fire and The Crossing and serves as a Conducting Fellow at the Curtis Institute of Music.
Polish-born Jakub Przybycień was assistant conductor of the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra and National Orchestra of Catalonia from 2023 to 2025. Recent debuts include the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra, European Union Youth Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, and NFM Leopoldinum Orchestra (Poland), as well as guest appearances during the 2025–26 season with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra and National Orchestra of Catalonia, Sinfonia Rotterdam, Deutsche Philharmonie Merck, Arctic Philharmonic, Zielona Gora Philharmonic, and Szczecin Philharmonic. Also a violinist, Przybycień is winner of the 2025 Ernst Von Schuch Conducting Prize, finalist for the 2025 Herbert von Karajan Young Conductors Award, and 2025 International Conducting Competition Rotterdam, and semifinalist at the 2024 Malko Competition.
