Jahja Ling

Jahja Ling recently completed with distinction his tenure as Director of the Cleveland Orchestra’s Blossom Festival for the last six seasons (2000-2005). He also served as that Orchestra’s Resident Conductor for 17 years(1985-2002). Mr. Ling was named Music Director Laureate of the Florida Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra of Taiwan after he served as Music Director and Artistic Director with those respected organizations.

As a guest conductor, Mr. Ling has conducted all of the major symphony orchestras in North America. In the spring of 2004, he received critical acclaim for his performances of Mahler’s First and Fifth symphonies with the Boston Symphony and Pittsburgh Symphony, respectively. In recent seasons, Mr. Ling’s guest conducting engagements have included the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia and the symphony orchestras of Baltimore, Cleveland, Honolulu, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, San Antonio and Utah. Abroad, he has recently appeared at the Tivoli Festival with the Copenhagen Philharmonic and with the Bochum Symphony in Germany. In May 2000, his debut performance with the St. Louis Symphony and cellist Yo-Yo Ma was featured on the ABC News program 20/20. He also demonstrates a strong commitment to working with young musicians, and has conducted the orchestras of the Juilliard School (where he is a regular guest), the Curtis Institute and the Aspen Music Festival.

Mr. Ling is acclaimed not only for his interpretation of the standard repertoire, but also for the breadth of contemporary music included in his programs. Among the world premieres he has conducted are works by William Bolcom, George Perle, Alvin Singleton, Augusta Read Thomas, Mark Anthony Turnage, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, with orchestras such as The Cleveland Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony, the Florida Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic, among others.

Mr. Ling made his European debut with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in 1988 to great acclaim. His other engagements abroad have taken him to the Chamber Orchestra of Lausanne, the China Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra in Beijing, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, the Malaysia Philharmonic, the MDR Symphony Orchestra in Leipzig, the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, the NDR Radio-Philharmonie in Hannover, the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg, the Orchestre Nationale du Capitole de Toulouse, the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Shanghai Symphony, the Singapore Symphony, the Sydney Symphony, the Stockholm Philharmonic, and Tokyo’s Yomiuri Nippon Symphony. In May 1997, Mr. Ling led the Scottish Chamber Orchestra on tour to Hong Kong as part of the celebrations marking the return of Hong Kong to China. In 2001, Mr. Ling was also invited to conduct the Super World Orchestra, an orchestra comprised of top principals of 30 of the most prominent orchestras in Europe, America, and Asia for performances in Osaka and Tokyo.

After his acclaimed Cleveland Orchestra debut in January 1985, Jahja Ling held the longest tenure of any Resident Conductor of the Orchestra, conducting over 400 concerts and over 550 works including many world premiere performances. Among his distinguished services as resident conductor, Mr. Ling led the Orchestra’s annual concert in downtown Cleveland, heard by more than a million people since first presented in 1990. The September 2001, a live television broadcast of A Concert in Tribute and Remembrance, with The Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Jahja Ling and Franz Welser Moest, was honored with an Emmy Award. Prior to his Cleveland appointment, Mr. Ling served as Assistant and Associate Conductor of the San Francisco Symphony. Deeply committed to education, Mr. Ling served as founding music director of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra (1986 to 1993) and the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra (1981-84). The U.S. House of Representative presented a Congressional Record of his outstanding achievements in the U.S. Capitol last September.

His tenure as Music Director of the Florida Orchestra was a notable artistic success, both in the Tampa Bay region and beyond. The significant contribution he made to the cultural life of the area was recognized by the mayors of Tampa and St. Petersburg, who presented him with keys to the city in April 2002 and further honored him through a declaration of “Jahja Ling Day” in February 1998.

Jahja Ling’s recordings for Telarc include the Dupré Organ Symphony and the Rheinberger Organ Concerto with soloist Michael Murray and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and two albums of baroque works with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (the first of which, with trumpeter Rolf Smedvig, was nominated for a Grammy award). In 1998, Azica Records released a disc with Mr. Ling and the Florida Orchestra entitled “Symphonic Dances,” featuring Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story,” Strauss’s “Rosenkavalier Suite,” and Ravel’s Suite No. 2 from “Daphnis and Chloé.” Mr. Ling and the Florida Orchestra have also recorded Stephen Montague’s “From the White Edge of Phrygia” for Continuum. His performance with the New York Philharmonic of the world premiere of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s Third Symphony is featured in a recent compact disc collection of Philharmonic performances entitled American Celebrations. Also, The Cleveland Orchestra has released a special edition compact disc featuring Mr. Ling and the orchestra performing Saint-Saens’ “Organ” Symphony for the rededication of Severance Hall’s Norton Memorial Organ.

Born in Jakarta, Indonesia, of Chinese descent and now an American citizen, Jahja Ling began to play the piano at age 4 and studied at the Jakarta School of Music. At age 17, he won the Jakarta Piano Competition and, one year later, was awarded a Rockefeller grant to attend The Juilliard School, where he studied piano with Mieczyslaw Munz and conducting with John Nelson. After completing a master’s degree at Juilliard, he studied orchestral conducting at the Yale School of Music under Otto-Werner Mueller and received a doctor of musical arts degree in 1985. He was also awarded an honorary doctorate by Wooster College in 1993. In the summer of 1980 Mr. Ling was granted the Leonard Bernstein Conducting Fellowship at Tanglewood and two years later was selected by Mr. Bernstein, who became one of his most influential mentors, to be a Conducting Fellow at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute. In 1988 Mr. Ling was a recipient of the Seaver/National Endowment for the Arts Conductor’s Award, a career development grant made to American conductors of extraordinary promise.

As a pianist, Mr. Ling won a bronze medal at the 1977 Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in Israel and was awarded a certificate of honor at the following year’s Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow. He made his Cleveland Orchestra debut as a pianist in 1987 and has appeared as both soloist and conductor with a number of orchestras in the United States and internationally.

Mr. Ling makes his home in San Diego with his wife, Jessie, and their young daughters Priscilla and Stephanie.