Jahja Ling

Jahja Ling (Chinese: 林望傑; pinyin: Lín Wàng-jié) is a conductor, music director and pianist. Since 2004 he has been the music director and conductor of the San Diego Symphony. He is of Hokchiu Chinese descent, formerly an Indonesian citizen and is now an American citizen. He is the first and only conductor of Chinese descent to serve as music director of a major U.S. orchestra.

He was born 25 October 1951 in Jakarta, Indonesia and began to play the piano at age 4. He studied at the Yayasan Pendidikan Musik (Indonesian: Foundation for Musical Education) in Jakarta. At age 17 he received a Rockefeller award scholarship and went to study at The Juilliard School in New York City. At Juilliard he earned a master's degree, studied piano with Mieczyslaw Munz and conducting with John Nelson. Ling then went to study orchestral conducting at the Yale School of Music under Otto-Werner Mueller and received a doctor of musical arts degree. He was also a conducting fellow at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute.

Deeply committed to music education, Mr. Ling served as founding Music Director of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra (1986-1993) and the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra (1981–84), where Ling served as SFSYO's first Music Director from 1981-1984. He and the SFSYO were selected to perform for Queen Elizabeth II while on a State visit to San Francisco in 1983. Ling was on the conducting roster of the Cleveland Orchestra from 1984–2005, serving as Resident Conductor from 1985-2002.

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