The Seattle Symphony announced that Xian Zhang would be its next music director beginning in the 2025-’26 season. She is the first female music director in the orchestra’s 121-year history.
Zhang is scheduled to lead the Seattle Symphony in two performances later this season, including Holst’s “The Planets” and Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony, for which she will now take the title of Music Director Designate. Her five-year tenure officially begins in September next year.
The appointment fills a void left by the sudden resignation in January 2022 of former Seattle Symphony Music Director Thomas Dausgaard. At the time, Dausgaard told The New York Times of a “strained relationship” with the orchestra’s management, saying he felt “personally not safe” and “threatened,” but would not elaborate further. Since then, the orchestra has employed a rotating cast of guest conductors.
In becoming the Seattle Symphony’s music director, Zhang becomes one of only two female conductors leading a major American orchestra. (The other is Nathalie Stutzmann at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.) She also joins a growing list of non-white, non-European conductors with significant American appointments, including Eun Sun Kim at San Francisco Opera, Jonathon Heyward at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and of course Gustavo Dudamel at the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Born in Dandong, China, Zhang moved to the United States in 1998 to pursue her doctorate at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. She is currently the music director of the New Jersey Symphony, a role she has held since 2016. She has also guest conducted at orchestras worldwide, including the Staatskapelle Dresden, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
