The opening of Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68 begins to build, the dramatic harmony of brass and string filling the brightly lit concert hall at the Neal S. Blaisdell Center with a stormy intensity. Conductor Dane Lam is standing center stage, eyes closed, cheeks slightly puffed, and brows furrowed. His hands cut through the air sharply, guiding the Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra’s 84 musicians through the celebrated German composer’s maiden symphony.
Then, with one swift motion, the music comes to a sudden halt. Lam has paused the song to offer feedback shaped by his many hours of studying Brahms’ work—not just how it was written, but the composer’s personal story and philosophy, too. “Great orchestras don’t need a conductor to stay together,” Lam says. “They need a conductor to steer the ship—to give direction and inspiration.”
Lam brings more than 20 years of conducting experience to his role as the orchestra’s dynamic music and artistic director. Growing up in a musical family in Australia—his parents played piano and guitar and regularly attended the ballet—music was always a part of Lam’s life, but he didn’t consider it as a career until high school, where he had access to a variety of musical instruments.
Lam was entertaining the idea of becoming a jazz pianist when, during his senior year, a teacher asked if he wanted to try his hand at conducting the class. “It felt right,” he says. It was also an opportune time and place for an aspiring young conductor—the country’s government-backed Conductor Development program, now known as the Australian Conducting Academy, had been recently launched to foster a new generation of Australian conductors. Lam was among those talented students chosen for the selective program.
Lam’s passion and aptitude for conducting soon stood out to the accomplished conductors he was studying with, particularly the celebrated Italian conductor Gianluigi Gelmetti, then maestro of the Sydney Symphony and Teatro dell’Opera di Roma. At 18, Lam was handpicked by Gelmetti to conduct his first public symphony in Sydney. (Fortunately, Lam recalls, he was too young to be nervous.) While studying conducting at the University of Queensland, he spent three summers in Tuscany, Italy, for a rigorous mentorship under Gelmetti—an experience he describes as tough but formative.
We want to be a safe space for the community—somewhere people can go and experience something they wouldn’t in everyday life.
Dane Lam, conductor
“My whole career has been all these little flukes,” Lam says with humility. After attending The Juilliard School in New York and The Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England, he went on to become the principal conductor of China’s Xi’an Symphony Orchestra, a position he still holds today.
As his career evolved, conducting the first post-pandemic performances across Australia and in countries such as Scotland and Holland, Lam earned a reputation for an energetic stage presence—quick movements, eyes opening and closing expressively, his face mirroring every nuance of the music. If a maestro’s instrument is his body language, there is an art to “showing the sound you want through your hands,” as Lam puts it.
Following the pandemic, the Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra was in search of a new music director to lead the 125-year-old orchestra, with an interest in mirroring what Lam was doing in Australia. Intrigued by the organization’s goal of positioning itself as a Pacific orchestra and the chance to highlight Asian American and Pacific Island talents, Lam guest conducted and got the job. “I was just beguiled by this place as well,” he says of relocating from North Queensland to Hawai‘i with his wife in 2023. “I felt at home.”
Lam’s vision for the Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra is to weave classical music into the fabric of modern life in Hawai‘i through programming, partnerships, and advocacy. “We want to be a safe space for the community—somewhere people can go and experience something they wouldn’t in everyday life,” he says. Recent programming includes headlining performances by local drag queens, a Beethoven cycle featuring work from a living composer based in the Pacific, and live performances of the musical scores from beloved movies like Star Wars and Indiana Jones.
Lam’s days are jam-packed, often with administrative tasks or donor relations work to ensure funding keeps the organization alive for the island community. This means he must consciously carve out space for the music itself: to study, to seek inspiration by reading poetry and going out in nature. “I have to be quite fierce about fighting for that time because, in the end, it’s all about the music—that’s the heart of everything we do,” he says.
At the finale of the orchestra’s 2025 HapaSymphony series at Hawai‘i Theatre, there is a lively hum of excitement in the air as the night’s headliners, including Maui-raised Jeff Peterson and local legend Keola Beamer, take the stage. Lam tones down his usual charisma at the podium, letting the mellow twang of their slack-key guitars command the spotlight. Fingers on the strings, Peterson gently articulates the notes of “Hawaiian Skies,” a tune made famous from the 2011 film The Descendants.
The orchestral sounds of flutes and cellos soon join the melody, stirring the theater with a palpable energy. At this moment, it’s not about the musicians or even Lam, their intrepid leader. It’s about the powerful exchange of energy between the musicians and audience. “You can feel when the audience [is] there with you,” Lam says.
