Talking To: Zhang Jiemin
Zhang Jiemin has conducted operas and orchestras all over the world and worked with some of contemporary classical music’s most prominent players. After years in Europe, she's back in her home country, where she serves as the conductor in residence of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra.
One of the few female Chinese conductors, Zhang Jiemin takes a stunning picture. Her soft features and girl-next-door good looks make for photogenic magic, whether gripping her conductor’s wand or posing for a photo shoot. But she doesn’t attribute her meteoric rise through the ranks of classical music to her feminine wiles.
“The audience can react at first if they see you are female conductor, but then as soon as you stand at the podium and the performance starts, then they will just be able to judge whether you are a good or bad conductor regardless of gender,” she explains. “The beauty of conducting really comes from people cooperating together and making really beautiful music.”
And Zhang should know – she’s played in some of the most prestigious opera houses in Europe and made the rounds through her home country as well. But her story line began when she was just seven years old.
“Percussion and piano are the basic instruments for conducting. I started when I was a young child because my parents wanted me to learn music and then I fell in love with the music,” says Zhang. “I was very good in school and it was actually my professor [Huang Xiaotong] who guided me as a student towards conducting.”
Although she’s worked with many illustrious composers and conductors in her life, including Tandun, Michel Plasson and Zubin Mehta, she considers her first professor to be her most significant mentor.
“Professor Huang taught me a lot about technique. He is the main teacher of most of the Shanghai conductors such as Yu Long and many others,” she says. “He has a great knowledge of music and conducting technique and early on he was the most influential for me.”
Zhang graduated from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in 1995, going on to conduct Carmen at the Shanghai Spring Festival just two years later. Over the past decade and a half, she has conducted many works in her home country, including Aida, Faust, Othello, Madame Butterfly and Romeo and Juliet – just to name a few.
Her career has taken her to Europe multiple times, for performances of La Boheme with the Latvian National Opera, Turandot with La Fenice Opera Hose in Venice and Cavalleria Rusticana with San Carlo Opera House in Naples – the last of which was recorded and released on DVD. Her travels have turned her into a nomad who speaks multiple languages.
“I am quite used to the travelling, and I think I am born to do it. I can’t stay in one place,” she says. “The first time I travelled abroad I was already working as an assistant at a theatre, so I could concentrate on my studies without having to worry about money, which makes me quite lucky.”
Recently Zhang conducted the Chinese premiere of The Women Generals of the Yang’s by the Shanghai Peking Opera Troupe and Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. Based on an old wives' tale, the play chronicles the brave actions of a strong family of women who overcome the odds to defend their family honour and defeat an army. In addition to Zhang's talents, the performance showcased the talents of the ARTISTRY Elite of Female Artists. The experimental combination of Chinese opera and orchestration was an undertaking she considers one of her greatest challenges.
“I had never seen a Chinese opera before. It is a very different kind of music to anything I am used to or have been classically trained in as it has no routine, no score. Everything is from memory not written down,” she says. “It is very different and I had to learn everything from zero, which was the most difficult part.”
But the hard work was worth it – the event proved to be a good way to reaching Chinese people who might not be familiar with opera and symphony orchestra through the performance. Zhang sees the future of the Shanghai orchestra as a bright one that she will be closely involved with as she continues her post as conductor in residence.
Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. 105 Hunan Lu. Tel: 6437 4682. Web: www.sh-symphony.com
