Dane Lam
The vibrant Australian-Chinese-Singaporean conductor Dane Lam enjoys international acclaim for his electrifying concert performances and his innovative, collaborative approach to music-making. He conducts to connect: to connect all forms of music with the broadest range of
listeners possible and to connect diverse audiences to one other around the globe. He does this by celebrating the geographical identity of every group of musicians he leads, promoting their unique and varied cultural identities through performances of their music, their composers and their works in proper, imaginative contexts. Maestro Lam is an international artist in the truest sense.
Maestro Lam currently serves as Music and Artistic Director of the Hawai’i Symphony Orchestra (Honolulu), as Artistic Director of the State Opera South Australia (Adelaide), and as Principal Conductor of the Xi’an Symphony Orchestra China. He works not only as conductor with these three organizations, but also as impresario, producer, and administrator using talents that extend far beyond the scope of the podium.
From the moment his tenure at the Hawai’i Symphony Orchestra began in 2023, Maestro Lam embraced the orchestra’s prime mission - to serve the community of Hawai’i. Compelled by the conviction that the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra should be an orchestra of and for its own
Pacific region, Maestro Lam designed a new artistic vision to invite, engage and galvanize the people of Hawai'i around the orchestra.
In just two seasons, Maestro Lam returned the Symphony to a place of pride and prominence in Hawaii. He instituted regular televised broadcasts and live streamed performances of the core Masterworks programs and the Hawaiian-music HapaSymphony series. He raised ticket sales to unprecedented levels and secured major funding and government support for forward-thinking musical projects. Legendary Pacific/Asian superstar artists such as Ray Chen, Jennifer Koh, Joyce Yang and Fleur Barron all come to collaborate with the Hawai’i Symphony alongside local Hawaiian legends the likes of Robert Cazimero, Jake Shimabukuro, and Paula Fuga. Maestro Lam planned an ambitious, complete cycle of all nine Beethoven symphonies for the 2024-25 concert season, and has commissioned Pacific Rim composers Xiaogang Ye, Huang Ruo, Deborah Cheetham Fraillion and Jon Magnussen all to write new works for the orchestra. He has insisted on presenting the Hawai’i premières of works by dozens of other living composers and has given careful attention to the long neglected symphonic music of Hawaii
born Pulitzer-prize nominated composer, Dai Keong Lee (1915-2005).
In 2025, Dane’s first year at the helm of the State Opera South Australia, he offers his audiences a decidedly international artistic plan with a new season that features three major coproductions with several renown European and Asian opera houses In the 27-28 season he will present a new title from the talented Missy Mazzoli that will be shared with San Francisco Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Scottish Opera and Norrlandsoperan Sweden.
When Maestro Lam assumed the post of Principal Conductor of the X’ian Symphony Orchestra in 2014, he was tasked to raise the artistic level and profile of that orchestra. He did so by personally inviting superstar artists the likes of Jose Carreras, Sumi Jo, Midori Goto, Barry Douglas, Angela Hewitt, Stephen Hough, Ning Feng, Kirill Gerstein, and Yundi Li among others to appear with his musicians.
​
He established a new Xian opera series directing the very first staged, professional opera in this 3000-year-old city with Puccini’s Tosca in 2015 and continuing with one each year after that honoring titles such as Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, Verdi’s La Traviata, and Leonard Bernstein’s
Candide. Maestro Lam programmed the first complete Beethoven and Brahms symphony cycles in Xian’s history and he continues now his complete Mahler cycle there in partnership with the University of Queensland. Maestro Lam brought the Xian symphony to the 2016 CCTV1 Mid-Autumn Festival Gala which was televised live throughout China and on international networks to an audience exceeding one billion viewers. His tenure is Xi’an has notably built a new era of international partnership which in turn has forged a period of never before seen financial stability and security for the orchestra.
Opera plays a crucial role in Maestro Lam’s artistic life. He has conducted more than thirty productions of operas with leading companies including State Opera South Australia, Opera Australia, Scottish Opera, West Australian Opera, Opera Holland Park, Opera Queensland and
Hawaii Opera Theatre. Following his 2019 company debut conducting La bohème for Opera Australia, he was immediately re-invited to conduct Don Giovanni the following year. Other past highlights include Carmen at Scottish Opera, Orpheus et Eurydice with Opera Australia and
Opera Queensland, Carl Davis’ A Christmas Carol with Het Residentie Orkest in The Hague, Cilea’s L’arlesiana, as well as Il barbiere di Siviglia, Don Giovanni, Aida, Norma, Mascagni’s Iris, Will Todd’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and Così fan tutte at Opera Holland Park.
Maestro Lam made his conducting debut as Artistic Director of State Opera South Australia with a production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte in September 2024 and he leads Mozart’s Die Zauberflote in May, 2025 at Opera Hong Kong and directs Gluck’s masterpiece Orfeo ed
Euridice at Opera Australia Sydney in November and December, 2025.
As orchestral conductor, Maestro Lam has led The Residentie Orchestra The Hague, the Munich Radio Symphony, the Sydney Symphony the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Beethoven Orchester Bonn, the City of London Sinfonia, the Adelaide Symphony, the Symphony of West Australia (Perth), the Queensland Symphony, the Canberra Symphony, the RTE Concert Orchestra Dublin, and the Verbier Festival Orchestra among many others.
Born in Brisbane, Australia to an Australian mother and a Singaporean-Chinese father, Dane played piano, clarinet, and saxophone as a child, and studied conducting under Gwyn Roberts at the University of Queensland. Following an assistantship and three years of study with
Gianluigi Gelmetti, then Chief Conductor of the Sydney Symphony and Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Dane attained his Masters from The Juilliard School on a full scholarship under James DePreist before undertaking a Junior Fellowship in Conducting at the Royal Northern College of
Music under Sir Mark Elder, Clark Rundell and Mark Heron. A protégé of the late Kurt Masur, Dane held the post as his Assistant Conductor at the Orchestre National de France. As well as a former Principal Conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and Associate
Conductor with Opera Holland Park, Dane is an International Ambassador of the Royal Northern College of Music. Dane currently divides his time between Honolulu and Adelaide.
​
December, 2024
