Ziwei Ma is currently the Conducting Fellow at the New World Symphony. She has been named a 2026–2028 Award Recipient of the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship. In 2025, Ma served as Cover Conductor for The Philadelphia Orchestra under Stéphane Denève and appeared as Offstage Conductor in performances of Richard Strauss’s An Alpine Symphony.
Ma returns to the Lakes Area Music Festival in 2026 following her first season as Conducting Fellow in 2025. In the summers of 2021, 2022, and 2023, Ma was selected as a Conducting Fellow at the Eastern Music Festival, the Aspen Music Festival and School, and the National Orchestral Institute + Festival, respectively. During her conducting studies in the United States, she gained experience under the guidance of Marin Alsop, Robert Spano, Alan Gilbert, Federico Cortese, Gerard Schwarz, and James Ross. Ma later participated in conducting workshops with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in 2024, where she was mentored by JoAnn Falletta. In 2025, she worked with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, where she was mentored by Andrew Constantine, and subsequently returned as a guest conductor in 2026.
Ma’s European experience includes participating in conducting masterclasses with the Göttinger Symphonie Orchester in Germany and the Silesian Philharmonic in Poland in 2023, where she worked under the guidance of Johannes Schlaefli and Lawrence Foster. In the summer of 2024, she conducted members of the Armenian National Philharmonic Orchestra as part of a masterclass led by Vasily Petrenko.
Born and raised in Beijing, Ma earned her bachelor’s degree from the Central Conservatory of Music before completing master’s and doctoral degrees in orchestral conducting at The Hartt School under the mentorship of Edward Cumming.