Molly Turner

Molly Turner is a Chinese-born conductor and composer. Highlights of the 2022–23 season include her debut at the San Francisco Symphony’s SoundBox, a school concert with Orchestre de Paris, conducting the premiere of her own orchestra work with the Tacoma Youth Symphony, and the premiere of Anthony Brandt’s Diabelli 200 at Performing Arts Houston. Recently she has also conducted the Juilliard Orchestra, Gstaad Festival Orchestra, Theater Orchester Biel Solothurn, Dallas Opera Orchestra, Primrose International Viola Competition, Colburn Orchestra, and Eastern Festival Orchestra. In 2019 Ms. Turner was the youngest conductor invited for residency at the Dallas Opera’s Hart Institute for Women Conductors. She has served as assistant conductor for the Berlin Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, National Polish Radio Symphony, San Diego Symphony, Utah Symphony, Juilliard Orchestra, and Colburn Orchestra. She has assisted Esa-Pekka Salonen, David Robertson, Rafael Payare, Nicholas McGegan, Jeffrey Milarsky, and Paul Watkins. She a Salonen Fellow in Colburn Conservatory’s Negaunee Conducting Program. 

As a composer, Ms. Turner is interested in the balance between strictly dictated elements and more aleatoric notation, and her relationship to the standard repertoire is often integrated in subtle ways beneath the foreground of the music. A violinist and violist herself, she finds string instruments endlessly fascinating. Improvisation is a core part of her writing process and she often starts her work as voice memos or graphic scores.