Ziwei Ma will join the New World Symphony as Conducting Fellow in September for the 2025–2026 season. Before that, she will spend the summer of 2025 at the Lakes Area Music Festival, where she will also serve as the conducting fellow.
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, James Ross, Robert Spano, Alan Gilbert, Gerard Schwarz, and Federico Cortese. Ma later participated in conducting workshops with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in 2024 and the Fort Wayne Philharmonic in 2025, where she received mentorship from JoAnn Falletta and Andrew Constantine, respectively.
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 in Beijing, China, Ma graduated from the Central Conservatory of Music before continuing her orchestral conducting studies at The Hartt School, where she earned her Master’s degree under the mentorship of Edward Cumming. She is now pursuing her Doctor of Musical Arts at the same institution.