Xian Zhang Named Music Director at Seattle Symphony

In Thursday’s (9/5) Seattle Times, Gemma Wilson writes, “After a nearly three-year search, Seattle Symphony announced Thursday its next music director: Xian Zhang, who will become the first woman music director in the company’s 121-year history. Zhang, who is currently music director of the New Jersey Symphony, will begin a five-year contract as Seattle Symphony’s music director in the 2025-26 season, becoming, according to the Symphony, the first woman to lead a major West Coast orchestra. She succeeds previous Music Director Thomas Dausgaard, who abruptly departed the Symphony in January 2022…. Zhang made her Seattle Symphony debut in 2008, and has conducted here many times since then … ‘It’s kind of incomparable, the energy that comes from the podium when she’s conducting,’ said Jeffrey Barker, Seattle Symphony’s associate principal flute player, chair of the Seattle Symphony & Opera Players’ Organization, and one of five musicians on the search committee…. Her contract with the New Jersey Symphony goes through the 2027-28 season…. Zhang, who is also the first person of color to become music director of Seattle Symphony, will become one of a small number of women to lead a large-budget orchestra. Overall, among U.S. orchestras of various sizes, men made up 88.9% of music directors, while women made up only 11.1% in the 2022-23 season, according to a report by the League of American Orchestras.”