Born into a musical family in Shanghai, Lü Jia began studying piano and cello at a young age. He later studied conducting at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, under the tutelage of conductor Zheng Xiaoying. At the age of twenty-four, Lü Jia entered the University of Arts in Berlin, where he continued his studies under Hans-Martin Rabenstein and Robert Wolf. The following year, he was awarded both the first prize and jury’s prize at the Antonio Pedeotti International Conducting Competition in Trento, Italy, launching his career as a conductor.

Earlier this year Lü Jia was appointed Artistic Director of Music for the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) and Music Director and Chief Conductor of the China NCPA Orchestra; previously he served as chief conductor and artistic director of opera at the NCPA. He is also currently Music Director and Chief Conductor of the Macao Orchestra and has served as artistic director of the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Symphony Orchestra in Spain. Lü Jia has led orchestras such as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Bamberg Symphony, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and Lyon National Orchestra. He was also the first Chinese conductor to lead the Chicago Symphony.

Lü Jia was previously music director of Verona Opera in Italy, and was the first Asian conductor to serve as the artistic director of a major Italian opera house. He was chief conductor at Trieste Opera, and he has also led productions at La Scala, Deutsche Oper Berlin, and Bavarian State Opera, among others. Lü Jia was bestowed the President’s Prize by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano in 2007 for his contribution to Italian culture. In 2012, he served on the jury of the Domingo International Vocal Competition.

Lü Jia was the first Chinese conductor to record Felix Mendelssohn’s complete orchestral works, and is the only conductor to record the complete works of Swedish composer Ingvar Lidholm. This performance marks his debut under San Francisco Symphony auspices.

(October 2017)

China NCPA Orchestra is the resident orchestra of the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), Beijing. Established in March 2010, the orchestra performs in more than a dozen opera productions in its home venue every year as well as in regular orchestral concerts in its own season. Lü Jia took up the post of chief conductor in 2012 and became NCPA's Artistic Director of Music and Music Director of the NCPA Orchestra, succeeding founding director Zuohuang Chen (now Conductor Laureate), in January 2017. This concert marks the NCPA Orchestra’s debut under San Francisco Symphony auspices.

Artists associated with the orchestra have included Zubin Mehta, Lorin Maazel, Valery Gergiev, Myung-Whun Chung, Christoph Eschenbach, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Fabio Luisi, Lang Lang, Stephen Kovacevich, Leo Nucci, and Yuja Wang, among many others.

The orchestra has gained critical acclaim for its performances in opera productions of not only standard repertory works such as Tosca, Die Fledermaus, Lohengrin, Aïda, and Nabucco, but also newly commissioned works such as Lei Lei’s The Chinese Orphan, and Guo Wenjing’s The Rickshaw Boy. The orchestra’s performance of Lorin Maazel’s Wagner adaptation, Ring without Words, was released on SONY Classics worldwide—the only recording Mr. Maazel ever made with a Chinese orchestra. The orchestra has presented the Chinese premieres of works by Tōru Takemitsu and Giya Kancheli, and the world premieres of works by Michael Gordon and Augusta Read Thomas. The NCPA Orchestra has received international praise for its performances at the Kissingen Summer Music Festival, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival as well as concerts in many cities in Germany as well as Sydney, Singapore, Seoul, Daegu, Abu Dhabi, Taipei, and Macau. 

(October 2017)

Recognized as the world’s premier pipa virtuoso, Wu Man is a soloist, educator, and composer who gives her lute-like instrument—which has a history of more than 2,000 years in China—a new role in both traditional and contemporary music. She has premiered hundreds of new works for pipa, while spearheading multimedia projects to both preserve and create global awareness of China’s ancient musical traditions. She frequently collaborates with the Kronos Quartet, Shanghai Quartet, and the Knights, and is a founding member of the Silkroad Ensemble. She has appeared on nearly 50 recordings, including numerous Grammy Award–winning and nominated albums. This season, Wu toured China with the Philadelphia Orchestra and joins the Juilliard Quartet at Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. 

Born in Hangzhou, Wu studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where she became the first recipient of a master’s degree in pipa. In 2023 she was honored with a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Asia Society’s Asia Arts Game Changers Award. She is a visiting professor at the Central Conservatory in Beijing and a distinguished professor at the Zhejiang and the Xi’an conservatories. In 2021 she received an honorary doctorate from the New England Conservatory of Music. She made her San Francisco Symphony debut in April 1993.