Xian Zhang has been hired as music director of the Seattle Symphony, becoming the first woman conductor to head a major West Coast orchestra and filling a post that had been vacant since Thomas Dausgaard quit abruptly in January 2022.
32 minutes agoThis image released by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra shows Xian Zhang, center, during a pre-concert performance at Benaroya Hall in Seattle on April 4, 2024. Xian Zhang was hired Thursday as music director of the Seattle Symphony, becoming the first woman conductor to head a major West Coast orchestra and filling a post that had been vacant since Thomas Dausgaard quit abruptly in January 2022.
Zhang has been music director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra since 2016-17 and won a 2023 Grammy Award for a recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the string trio Time for Three of works by Jennifer Higdon and Kevin Puts. Following lengthy music director tenures of Gerard Schwarz and Ludovic Morlot , Dausgaard was hired in October 2017 to start a four-year contract in 2019-20. After Dausgaard quit with 1 1/2 seasons remaining in his contract, he told Danish National Radio’s P2 ,“I have felt threatened and I haven’t felt safe with going to work” and told The New York Times “I felt my life is too precious to be in such tension.” Orchestra officials denied any impropriety.
Born in China, Zhang started playing piano at 3, went to Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music and was invited by a teacher to step in to conduct Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” at 19 with the China National Opera Orchestra.
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