Junping Qian
conductor
Junping Qian, who is now in his third year of leading the Minnesota Orchestra’s Lunar New Year celebration, served as assistant conductor of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra from 2018 to 2020 and was a visiting faculty member at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. He won first prize at the 2017 Bucharest International Conducting Competition and was also a prizewinner in the 2019 International Competition of Young Conductors Lovro von Matačić in Zagreb, the 2021 Hans von Bülow International Conducting Competition and the 2022 Princess Astrid Competition in Trondheim. Since making his European debut at the Verbier Festival in 2012, Qian has conducted on four continents with orchestras such as the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Hungarian State Opera, Roma Sinfonietta, Minnesota Orchestra, Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and Kammerorchester Basel. Qian graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin. His teachers and mentors include Daniel Harding, Sir Roger Norrington, Thomas Søndergård, Christoph Eschenbach, Christian Ehwald, Mark Gibson and Otto-Werner Mueller.