Equally at home in symphony, opera, and ballet, Judith Yan has held Staff Conductor positions with the San Francisco Opera, Canadian Opera Company, and National Ballet of Canada.  

A dedicated advocate for new works, she has conducted numerous world premieres, including An American Dream (Perla/Murphy) for Seattle Opera, Dracula (Pastor/Kilar) for West Australian Ballet, February (Kaminsky/Moore), and Ours (Estacio/Chafe) for Opera on the Avalon, where she serves as Music Director and Principal Conductor.  

Recent performances include Don Giovanni and Suor Angelica with Opera Omaha, Madama Butterfly with New Orleans Opera, The Rape of Lucretia with San Francisco Opera (Merola), La Bayadère and Swan Lake with the Korean National Ballet, and Don Quixote with the Hong Kong Ballet. Since 2021, Yan has maintained a close association with the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra, leading nine programs featuring repertoire ranging from Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, and Dvořák to Gipps, Richter, and Copland.  

In the 2025–26 season, Yan will make her London Coliseum debut with the English National Ballet and lead Giselle and a Gala Concert with the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet. The season also includes a concert production of Tosca, orchestral programs featuring Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky, and Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater with the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra in Canada. She returns to the Jacobs School of Music for a mixed program of works by Janes, Balanchine, and Taylor, and makes her Opera Grand Rapids debut conducting Madama Butterfly.  

Yan’s performance of Sasha Jane’s The Nutcracker was featured in a PBS documentary and was broadcasted nationwide this winter.