Elim Chan:, chief conductor of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, where she is both the youngest and the first female director ever. Willeke Machiels photograph
“First woman ever” may no longer be news someday. But for now, on classical music podiums, the phrase still applies all too often.
Orchestras all over the world strive to be more inclusive, become more diverse, and represent more visibly the audiences they want to attract. As opportunities arise for conductors, the invisible but omnipresent barrier against women gradually comes down.
There’s no mystery: it just takes an opportunity.
Elim Chan, 36-year-old Hong Kong native who has become an in-demand conductor in Europe and the United States, epitomizes the future. Her thoughts after her triumph at the 2014 Donatella Flick conductor competition, when she found her skills suddenly in great demand? “It was only after I won that there was so much interest in me being a woman.”
The Donatella Flick London Symphony Orchestra competition, founded in 1991, is open to European Union conductors under the age of 30. Previous winners include François-Xavier Roth, Alexandre Bloch, and David Afkham. The prize comes with a one-year position as assistant conductor with the LSO, which allowed Chan to work alongside Marin Alsop, André Previn and, most memorably, Bernard Haitink.
Since then she’s also been a Dudamel Fellow in Los Angeles, and holds guest conductor positions at Sweden’s NorrlandsOperan and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. And she is currently chief conductor of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, where she is both the youngest and the first female director ever.
Chan lives in Amsterdam with her husband, percussionist Dominique Vleeshouwers. She was in Switzerland when we spoke just after New Year’s Day, where she had just led holiday programs with the Bern Symphony Orchestra.
She comes to the United States in January to conduct concerts with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (Jan. 20–22), the Los Angeles Philharmonic (Jan. 27–30), and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (Feb. 5, 6).
Chan collaborates with pianist Igor Levit in Boston (Brahms’s second concerto) and Los Angeles (Beethoven’s third concerto). She also leads new works by Brian Raphael Nabors (BSO) and Elizabeth Ogonek (LAPhil). In St. Louis she teams with percussionist Martin Grubinger for Tan Dun’s “The Tears of Nature.”
It’s an expansive set of repertory crammed into three weeks, and the rest of the spring brings even more ambitious programs and prominent soloists, with concerts throughout Europe. Chan repeats engagements with Levit and Grubinger, and collaborates with Gil Shaham, Marta Argerich, Sol Gabetta, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, and others. She conducts multiple concerts with her home orchestra in Antwerp, as well as programs with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Orchestre National de Lyon, and the Gürzenich Orchester Köln. She also tours Germany with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.
The Flick competition was not the first opportunity Chan capitalized on. That came at Smith College, where Chan initially enrolled as a science major, intending perhaps for a career in forensics.
“At my choir audition at Smith, the conductor said that I have good ears, and asked me to be her assistant,” she says. “I had already conducted—the first time was when I was 14—so I had some experience, but not professionally. At the time I thought it was a hobby. In fact it was the first knock on the question of what I should do.
“I kept singing—I’ve always been in choruses,” she says, “I think it’s important. Then a thunderbolt came sophomore year. We did the Verdi ‘Requiem.’ That conductor asked me if I could conduct the ‘Dies Irae,’ and the moment is burned in my life. One cannot forget how it sounds, with the bass drum pounding at the gates of hell.
“I told my teachers then I needed to do music,” she says. “I had a junior year at Oxford, and then a senior year of music study. I got into the graduate program at Michigan.
“In my final year at Michigan, I threw myself out there. I applied to many jobs. I thought, ‘Let’s try a competition.’ I didn’t think I had to win—it was my first competition. I went to London, and I was really focused on myself.
“By the time I got to the final, I felt like I had already won,” she says of the Flick. “And just before I went onstage one of the musicians said to me, ‘Just be you.’ And that gave me a big relief. I thought, ‘I’m enough, this is who I am.’
“It was a Cinderella moment,” she says. “Nobody knew me, and suddenly I had all these interviews. I didn’t sleep all night. I missed my flight home—I was in a trance.
“But I didn’t take on management for three or four months,” she says, before eventually ended up with the prestigious HarrisonParrott. “I had seen what happens. You can go sky high, and burn out really fast. Suddenly it can be a whirlwind, out of control. I’m the one who has to say yes, and I have to take my time.”
Chan brings that sensible perspective to her achievements. “I was happy to inspire a lot of women, but I don’t want my gender to take away from what I can bring to the music. I want people to see that I am a good conductor. Being a woman—I don’t want it to be a crutch.
“All the orchestras are trying to change,” she says. “People of color, women, minorities. I really try to make sure the music is good. It’s too easy to put in a woman here, a person of color there, and the music becomes not important. That turns people off.”
Chan is no different than any busy musician—the last two years have seen as many cancellations as performances, and scheduled concerts were being called off even as we spoke. Her January Antwerp concerts had just been postponed. But at press time, her state-side concerts were still on the schedule, and she had already negotiated the frustrating visa issues.
“Every country has their own rules,” she says; “each province has their own rules. In Belgium halls were closed, and the whole scene went out on the streets to protest. They retreated. But how long can they open the halls to play for 200 people?
“Getting a visa has been more difficult than before,” she says. “Twice my appointment got cancelled, because the embassy did not have enough people working. I had to cancel conducting in Cleveland twice. But right before Christmas I traveled to Frankfurt to get a visa, and I was finally successful.
“It’s not been easy,” she says. “People have all gone through a crazy two years. I definitely want to say goodbye to the pandemic, and I hope we are working toward that.”
Mentorship can be key in most any profession; for conductors, learning from experience makes all the difference. For Chan, her moments with the late Bernard Haitink stand out.
“Haitink had master classes in Lucerne,” she says. “It was 2015 or ’16. It was one of the most powerful experiences. He was teaching Wagner—‘Tristan.’ It was very difficult, keeping the long lines, and that was one of his strengths. He could make it so manageable.
“I was struggling with it, and he said, ‘I can’t explain,’ but he showed me. He took over, and in three minutes I started crying. He looked so calm, everything in his hands. His presence was so strong. You could feel every single emotion.
“Those three minutes of Wagner unfolded so naturally,” she says. “He said, ‘You have to learn to let it go.’ He gave me a glimpse.
“Now that he’s gone—how to follow this?” she says. “But at the same time, he gave me the courage to be myself. There’s a point where I’m the one who has to make a decision. That conviction is what the other 80 people are looking for.
“I have to make up my mind,” she says. “Ultimately I have to say, ‘This is it.’ You cannot force anything. It’s getting to know an orchestra, and them getting to know me. Musicians will always say ‘Do this’ or ‘Do that,’ but just keep open. I take it as, ‘This is how I am.’ I don’t get offended.”