Tianyi Lu
About this Artist
‘Her style of conducting is crystal clear... poetic and dramatic; excellent communicator.’
Jill White – Senior BBC Music Producer and Director of Music National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain
Tianyi Lu is the newly announced First Prize winner of the 2020 Sir Georg Solti Conducting Competition in Frankfurt and the 2020 Primo Guido Cantelli Conducting Competition in Italy. She is making a name for herself across multiple continents, with recent highlights having included concerts with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra, Lapland Chamber Orchestra, Seattle Symphony and Dunedin Symphony Orchestra. She was previously Assistant Conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, where she conducted various education and regional concerts before subsequently returning to the orchestra as a guest conductor in 2020. Lu has also worked with orchestras including the Gulbenkian Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra. She currently holds the position of Female Conductor in Residence with the Welsh National Opera and Principal Conductor of the St Woolos Sinfonia in the UK.
The 2020/21 season sees Lu making her debut with the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, Dresdner Philharmoniker, BBC Symphony Orchestra and Västerås Sinfonietta, alongside return engagements with the Hallé Orchestra and Romanian Radio National Orchestra. In the USA she will close the seasons of the Grand Rapids and Fort Worth Symphony Orchestras.
Lu was an active participant in the Concertgebouworkest masterclass with Daniele Gatti in June 2018, and was a Dudamel Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the 2017/18 season. In 2016 she was selected to participate in the conducting programme of the Linda and Mitch Hart Institute for Women Conductors at the Dallas Opera, and was subsequently invited back to assist their production of ‘La Traviata’ and to conduct a concert of Donizetti in 2017. Prior to this, Lu took part in Bernard Haitink’s Lucerne Festival Masterclass.
Her broad musical interests and passion for contemporary music led to her studying electronic music composition as well as studies in baroque flute, viola da gamba and harpsichord. She is strongly committed to education and outreach projects, and has been involved in the Sistema Aotearoa programme in New Zealand, inspired by the Venezuelan model.
Born in Shanghai, Lu’s family subsequently moved to New Zealand. She completed her Bachelor of Music with First Class Honours at the University of Auckland with Uwe Grodd and Karen Grylls, before studying at the University of Melbourne with John Hopkins. In 2015 Lu completed her Master of Music in Orchestral Conducting with Distinction at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, where she studied with David Jones.