Inside Jersey features ‘dynamic’ Xian Zhang

Inside Jersey profiles NJSO Music Director Xian Zhang ahead of the start of the 2017–18 season:

Speaking backstage before a recent NJSO concert at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, Xian Zhang (pronounced she-YEN jhong) says her enthusiasm has nothing to do with personal will, or drive.

"People, after a concert, will say, 'How did you get that much excitement and energy?' I say, 'I didn't have it. It was the music that required me to rise up to that.' I always think, as a musician, that should be the ultimate goal."

Zhang, 44, was born and raised in China, and held posts with orchestras around the world (Beijing; Milan; Cardiff, U.K.; New York; Cincinnati; Sioux City, Iowa) before taking the NJSO position. She now lives with her husband and two sons in Short Hills, and conducts the NJSO at NJPAC and other venues across the state.

Her second NJSO season runs from October 2017 to June 2018. She says one of the offerings she is most looking forward to is the Winter Festival: three weeks of programs in January with the theme of "America, Inspiring" (she will conduct the first and third weeks). The idea is to explore the work of foreign composers who came to the United States and were influenced by what they heard here.

Zhang says these concerts will have a connection to "the larger picture of where we are, as a society. Because it has to do with immigration, it has to do with history. What was the United States' role in music history, in terms of how musicians and artists traveled, and if they immigrated into the country, how that affected their composition."

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A conductor is also a performer, of course, and the adjective music critics use most to describe Zhang is "dynamic."

"Besides being a really wonderful musician, she has a physical gift with her hands," says NJSO violinist and concertmaster Eric Wyrick. "She conducts very easily and clearly -- which you would expect from a conductor, but it doesn't always happen like that. So, we're really lucky to have someone that has that kind of coordination and expressivity with their hands."

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Zhang’s second season with the NJSO opens with a pair masterworks—Beethoven’s “Emperor” Piano Concerto (featuring Jeremy Denk, a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow) and Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, October 7–8 in Newark and Morristown.