Ni Fan (1989) is Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Sichuan Symphony Orchestra, and Professor at the China Conservatory of Music. She obtained Konzertexam in Conducting (Postgraduate degree) from the Hochschule für Musik Saar (Germany), is a Visiting Scholar at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and serves as Permanent Conductor of the China Youth Philharmonic Orchestra.
Her musical education started at the age of four with piano, and by ten she had also taken up percussion. In 2010, she entered the master’s program at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin, where she developed her artistic voice as a percussionist and earned a number of notable distinctions.
She studied conducting with the renowned maestro Prof. Manuel Nawri, during her studies, received high recognition from leading figures in the field, including Markus Frank, Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of the Anhalt Theatre (Germany), French conductor Jean-Philippe Wurtz, and Professor Sian Edwards, Head of Conducting at the Royal Academy of Music, London.
Ni Fan has conducted numerous distinguished orchestras including the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra, the Saxon Wind Philharmonic, Zaafran Ensemble Berlin, Ensemble Adapter Berlin, LUX:NM Berlin, Ensemble Ö! Zürich, Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra, Beijing Symphony Orchestra, and a number of renowned philharmonic and symphony orchestras in China.
She was invited for two consecutive years to conduct the Anhaltische Philharmonie Dessau at the renowned “Impuls” Festival. She has led numerous world premieres of contemporary works, earning unanimous acclaim from composers.
In early 2019, she served as conductor for three operas co-produced by Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin, receiving wide acclaim. In June of the same year, she participated as Music Director in the production of a major contemporary music festival. As a guest professor, she has given conducting masterclasses at the Universität der Künste Berlin and the Hochschule für Musik Saar. Her honors include the Montblanc “Prix Montblanc” Award for Outstanding Young Musicians and Germany’s “Start-up! Music” Young Musician Award.
In recent years, Ni Fan has appeared extensively at major festivals and venues such as the China International Music Festival, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, Kissinger Sommer, Budapest Spring (Tavaszi) Festival. She has collaborated with the Berlin Philharmonic, the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Berlin State Opera, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Staatstheater Braunschweig, and other leading institutions. Deeply committed to charitable work, she conducts dozens of benefit concerts across Europe each year and has been praised by Berlin media as “one of the most promising and forward-looking musicians of her generation.”
Recently, she successfully conducted the 60th Anniversary commemorative ballet performances of The Red Detachment of Women by the National Ballet of China, the world premiere of the original ballet Dream of the Red Chamber, as well as productions of Swan Lake, Giselle, The Little Mermaid, and Cinderella. In February 2025, she was invited to conduct the FSMCV Symphony Orchestra at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía, where she led Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and the world premiere of Royal Soldiers’ (Marcha a la Real Senyera -the flag of Catalonia) by Juan Manuel Gómez de Edeta to great success. She has served as a jury member for the Khachaturian International Conducting Competition and the LLíRIA International Conducting Competition (Spain).
At the end of 2025, she conducted Armenian State Symphony Orchestra’s China tour. In 2026, her upcoming collaborations include performances with the Kraków Opera (Poland), the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra (Bulgaria), the Piracicaba Symphony Orchestra (Brazil), and the Boca del Río–Veracruz Symphony Orchestra (Mexico).