CFUW-Stratford Club will hold a Meet “n” Greet for new and returning members on Tuesday, September 27th at the University of Waterloo, Stratford Campus commencing at 7:30 p.m. Our Guest Speaker will be Judith Yan, Conductor of the Guelph Symphony Orchestra. Welcome!
Judith Yan, Biography
Judith Yan has been a staff conductor for the San Francisco Opera, the Canadian Opera Company, and the National Ballet of Canada. She is the Music Director and Principal Conductor of Opera on the Avalon, a summer festival in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and was most recently appointed Artistic Director of Guelph Symphony Orchestra. As a conductor of ballet she has led over 90 performances for the National Ballet of Canada, working with the world’s leading choreographers and ballet masters of today. Prior to her work with the NBoC, Judith served as the Staff Conductor of the San Francisco Opera, assistant to Maestro Donald Runnicles.
While with San Francisco Opera, her performances of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress for San Francisco Opera Merola was included in the San Francisco Chronicle’s Top Ten Classical Performances of the Year. Prior to the San Francisco Opera she served as the Canadian Opera Company’s Conductor-in-Residence, a position created for her by then General Director, the late Richard Bradshaw. For the company, she conducted in the Altamira-sponsored outdoor concerts, Alexina Louie’s The Scarlet Princess, and Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia.
She made her German conducting debut in 2005 with of La Cenerentola and Idomeneo with Ulmer Oper, and made her Italian debut in 2007 in Sulmona, Italy with COSI Festival’s production of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro. She returned in 2008 to conduct Puccini’s La Boheme. 2011 includes a New Zealand debut with Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, a Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra debut, a return to Hong Kong Ballet for Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, a recital with members of the San Francisco Opera for the Muir Land Trust in Lafayette, California, Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro in St. John’s, Newfoundland, a debut with Stratford Symphony Orchestra, and concerts with Guelph Symphony Orchestra.
