Born in Amsterdam on December 12, 1960, Jaap van Zweden launched his violin studies at five, guided by his father, a pianist. After claiming first prize in the National Oskar Back Violin Competition at fifteen, he entered Juilliard to work with Dorothy DeLay. The Concertgebouw Orchestra appointed him co-concertmaster in 1979 when he was eighteen, the youngest musician ever to receive that title; he held the post until 1995. A 1984 Edison Award recognized his recording of Brahms violin sonatas made with pianist Ronald Brautigam.
While the Concertgebouw Orchestra rehearsed in Berlin in 1990, Leonard Bernstein invited van Zweden to lead the opening movement of Mahler’s First Symphony from the podium as the elder composer listened from the auditorium. Thereafter his energies turned increasingly toward conducting. He directed the Brabants Orchestra and recorded Locatelli’s L’Arte del Violino with the Combattimento Consort before taking the podium with the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg and the Berlin Symphony.
Appointed chief conductor of the Orkest van het Oosten in 1996, he remained until 2000; the same year he made his American debut with the St. Louis Symphony. From 2000 to 2005 he led the Residentie Orkest of The Hague. During the 2002–2003 season he conducted Beethoven’s Fidelio for the Nationale Reisopera, marking his operatic debut, and preserved the composer’s nine symphonies with the Residentie ensemble. Between 2005 and 2012 he served as chief conductor and artistic director of both the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and the Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic. The Dallas Symphony named him music director in 2008 after a guest appearance two years earlier; he simultaneously held the chief conductorship of the Filharmonie van Vlaanderen from 2008 to 2011. In 2012 he assumed the music directorship of the Hong Kong Philharmonic, under whose auspices he led the city’s first complete Ring cycle. He became music director of the New York Philharmonic in 2018, at which point Dallas designated him conductor laureate. The following year Gramophone named the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra of the Year.
Several recent Decca Gold releases document his work with the New York Philharmonic, among them the premiere recording of Julia Wolfe’s Fire in My Mouth, nominated for Grammy Awards in Best Classical Contemporary Composition and Best Engineered Album, Classical. In 2020 he conducted the Philharmonic in the first recording of David Lang’s prisoner of the state. The Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra announced in 2022 that van Zweden will become its music director with the 2024 season, the same year he concludes his New York tenure.
Together with his wife Aaltje, van Zweden founded the Papageno Foundation in 1997 to deliver music therapy for children and young adults on the autism spectrum; the organization has since added in-home services, a residential and research center, and a dedicated application.
