Dane Lam is the Principal Conductor and Artistic Director of China’s Xi’an Symphony Orchestra (XSO). Born into a musical family to an Australian mother and Singaporean-Chinese father, Lam played the piano as a child, followed by studies in clarinet. After completing a Bachelor of Music with honours from The University of Queensland in 2006, he was accepted at age 22 as a postgraduate student at New York’s Juilliard School.
Lam first appeared with the Sydney Symphony in the Sydney Opera House at age eighteen, and has since conducted orchestras on four continents including Melbourne and Queensland Symphony Orchestras, Manchester Camerata, Verbier Festival Orchestra and Juilliard Orchestra.
In a nod to his Chinese heritage, Lam assumed the post of Principal Conductor of the XSO in 2014 and has since grown the orchestra to attract international artists. Lam conducted the XSO at the 2016 CCTV1 Mid-Autumn Festival Gala which was televised live around China and internationally to an audience of over one billion viewers.
In 2017 he invited University of Queensland Symphony Orchestra students to perform with the Xi’an Symphony Orchestra in China, a creative partnership between Lam and the UQ School of Music.
Lam has received numerous awards and scholarships both in Australia and abroad. These include the Bruno Walter Memorial Scholarship, Boris Christoff Prize, Brian Stacey Memorial Prize, the Pellegrino Scholarship, the Brian Boak Bursary and the Dalley-Scarlett Memorial Scholarship. He has been supported by Symphony Australia, the Australia Council for the Arts, Arts Queensland, the Ian Potter Foundation, Sydney Symphony Stuart Challender Foundation and he is a Young Artist with Opera Queensland .