A native of Hong Kong based in Los Angeles, Jenny Wong is the newly-appointed San Francisco Symphony Chorus Director, and the Associate Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Recent external conducting engagements include the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella Series, the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, The Industry, Long Beach Opera, Pasadena Symphony and Pops, Phoenix Chorale, the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles. This season, Wong will make her debut with the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra. In 2022, Wong’s performance of Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir with the Los Angeles Master Chorale was named by Alex Ross in The New Yorker as one of ten “Notable Performances and Recordings of 2022”. Together with Grant Gershon and the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Wong was also awarded The American Prize in Choral Performance — Professional Division. In 2021, Wong was one of nine national recipients of OPERA America’s inaugural Opera Grants for Women Stage Directors and Conductors. Staged and opera works include Peter Sellars’ staging of di Lasso’s Lagrime di San Pietro (Melbourne International Arts Festival, the Festival Internacional Cervantino, Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico, and in the U.S.), opera Sweet Land (2021 Award for Best New Opera by the Music Critics’ Association) by Du Yun and Raven Chacon, directed by Yuval Sharon and Cannupa Hanska-Luger, and Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and Kate Soper’s Voices from the Killing Jar in collaboration with WildUp.

As chorus master, Wong has prepared choruses for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel, San Francisco Symphony and Esa-Pekka Salonen, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Susanna Mälkki, Osmo Vänskä, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and Jaime Martin, Eric Whitacre, María Guinand, and Music Academy of the West, including Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 released by Deutsche Grammophon, winner of the 2022 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance, and the U.S. premier of Tan Dun’s Buddha Passion. Most recently, Wong was Assistant Producer of the Master Chorale’s latest album, Eric Whitacre’s The Sacred Veil with Signum Classics. 

Wong received her Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music from the University of Southern California. She earned her undergraduate degree in voice performance from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She has been a conducting fellow for the Oregon Bach Festival, Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Distinguished Concerts International New York and Hong Kong SingFest, by which she conducted the Hong Kong Sinfonietta and Hong Kong City Chamber Orchestra. Wong won two consecutive World Champion titles at the World Choir Games (China, 2010) and the International Johannes Brahms Choral Competition (Germany, 2011), conducting the Diocesan Girls' School Choir from Hong Kong.

AWARDS

2022 The American Prize in Choral Performance, Professional Chorus Division

2021 OPERA America Opera Grants for Women Stage Directors and Conductors

Champion, 2011 International Johannes Brahms Choral Competition, Wenigerode, Germany - Youth Choir of Equal Voices

Champion, 2010 World Choir Games, Shaoxing China - Youth Choir of Equal Voices

education

D.M.A. Choral Conducting, University of Southern California ‘17

M.M. Choral Conducting, University of Southern California '13

B.M. Voice Performance, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign '09