Jaap van Zweden is currently Music Director of the Seoul Philharmonic and Music Director-Designate of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. From the 2018/19 season through the 2023/24 season he served as the 26th Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, and he was the Music Director of the Hong Kong Philharmonic for 12 seasons running from 2012 to 2024.
He has conducted orchestras on three continents, appearing as guest with, in Europe, the Orchestre de Paris, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, the Staatskapelle Berlin, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Tonhalle-Orchestra Zurich and London Symphony Orchestra, and, in the United States, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony and other distinguished ensembles.
Maestro van Zweden begins his 2024/25 season in Amsterdam with tour performances with the Hong Kong Philharmonic in the Concertgebouw, and a concert performance of Der fliegende Holländer with the Netherlands Radio Orchestra, where he holds the title of Honorary Chief Conductor. He will also be part of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s celebration of Anton Bruckner’s Bicentenary, conducting the composer's 4th Symphony. Later he will lead the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in the orchestra’s annual presentation of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.
This season will also see a deepening of van Zweden’s relationship with the Chicago Symphony, with whom he will conduct Mahler’s 6th and 7th Symphonies in Chicago and then on a European tour with stops in cities such as Amsterdam, Hamburg and Prague, among others. Elsewhere in the USA he will conduct the Cincinnati Symphony for the first time, and he will return to the Dallas Symphony, where he served as Music Director from 2008 to 2018. Alongside his work in Seoul and with the Hong Kong Philharmonic, van Zweden’s presence as leading light in the Asian classical music scene will be underscored this season by appearances with orchestras in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
Maestro van Zweden’s tenure as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic was distinguished by such highlights as the reopening of the transformed David Geffen Hall, as well as World, US, and New York Premieres of 31 new works. Among them are pieces commissioned through Project 19 — which marks the centennial of the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution with new works by 19 women composers, among them Tania León’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Stride. Over the course of van Zweden’s time in New York, he conducted repertoire ranging from Beethoven and Bruckner to premieres by Marcos Balter, Etienne Charles, Caroline Shaw, and Carlos Simon, in addition to the works by Wolfe and Adams.
Jaap van Zweden’s New York Philharmonic recordings include the World Premiere of David Lang’s prisoner of the state (2020), and Wolfe’s Grammy-nominated Fire in my mouth (2019), both released on the Decca Gold label. He conducted the Hong Kong Philharmonic in first-ever performances in Hong Kong of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, released on the Naxos label. His acclaimed performances of Lohengrin, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and Parsifal — the last of which earned him the prestigious Edison Award for Best Opera Recording in 2012 — are available on CD and DVD.
Born in Amsterdam, Jaap van Zweden, at age 19, was appointed the youngest-ever concertmaster of Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and began his conducting career almost 20 years later, in 1996. In April 2023, van Zweden received the Concertgebouw Prize, for exceptional contributions to that organization’s artistic profile. He remains Conductor Emeritus of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra and Honorary Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, where he was Chief Conductor (2005–13); he also served as Chief Conductor of the Royal Flanders Orchestra (2008–11). Under his leadership, the Hong Kong Philharmonic was named Gramophone’s Orchestra of the Year in 2019. He was named Musical America’s 2012 Conductor of the Year and was the subject of an October 2018 CBS 60 Minutes profile on the occasion of his arrival at the New York Philharmonic.
In 1997 Jaap van Zweden and his wife, Aaltje, established the Papageno Foundation to support families of children with autism. The Foundation has grown into a multifaceted organization that focuses on the development of children and young adults with autism. The Foundation provides in-home music therapy through a national network of qualified music therapists in the Netherlands; opened the Papageno House in 2015 (with Her Majesty Queen Maxima in attendance) for young adults with autism to live, work, and participate in the community; created a research center at the Papageno House for early diagnosis and treatment of autism and for analyzing the effects of music therapy on autism; develops funding opportunities to support autism programs; and, more recently, launched the app TEAMPapageno, which allows children with autism to communicate with each other through music composition.
Photo Credit: Simon van Boxtel