Photograph courtesy Cincinnati Ballet
In May last year, following an international search, the Cincinnati Ballet announced the appointment of its new music director. Following in the footsteps of former Music Director Emeritus Carmon DeLeone, who stepped down after more than 50 years in the role, would be Alyssa Wang, an accomplished violinist, composer, and conductor.
Wang is young, just 31, but comes to Cincinnati with a wealth of experience. She hails from Boston, where she performs as a violinist with the Boston Chamber Music Society and served as assistant conductor for the Boston Ballet for four years. She is currently music director at the Cape Symphony Orchestra in West Barnstable, Massachusetts, and cofounder, principal conductor, and artistic director of the Boston Festival Orchestra, a nonprofit offering accessible and educational classical music experiences.
As only the second music director in Cincinnati Ballet history, Wang finds herself with big shoes to fill. She debuted in the ballet’s 2025–26 season in The Nutcracker, followed by Swan Lake and Director’s Vision: Liberty in Motion. The 2026–27 season begins in September with The Kaplan New Works Series.
Cincinnati Magazine sat down with Wang to discuss her first season at the ballet, the responsibility of being a leader in the music industry, and the legacy she hopes to leave behind.
What does it look like to work various conducting roles at one time?
It’s a lot of travel, and I’ve had to really up my game in terms of organizing all the different projects going on simultaneously. I would say that I’m never bored, ever. And I have a really amazing variety in the work that I do, between playing, conducting, and even composing.
What does it look like for you to conduct a ballet? You’ve gone to rehearsals and studied movement of the dancers, but when there’s a different cast night by night, how do you prepare?
I have my solo preparation, where I’m studying the score and everything to do with the music. And then I have my ballet preparation, which involves literally being in the same studio as the dancers as they’re rehearsing. In the week leading up to the first performance, I’m in the studio, usually conducting a pianist who is playing an orchestra reduction of the score. That’s where I learn what tempos does each cast prefer? What does the choreographer want? That’s where I’m learning everything, and through conducting in rehearsals, that muscle memory is built so that way, when I do transition to a full orchestra, ideally all of those tempos are still in my mind and my body, and then when we’re on the big stage, it’s just a result of all those weeks of work.
What sort of creative choices are you making when figuring out how to conduct a work of music?
It’s a lot of different artistic minds that are combining to make the decisions that you see when you’re an audience member. At the forefront of everything is the music that was written by the composer. I’m looking at the indications that are written for me in the music, but then you also have the choreographer who is coming in and often is changing some of the things that are not written in the music and insisting on certain transitions and tempos. My job is to balance both things, between what the composer wants and what the choreographer wants, and then on a third level, what the dancers need in order to be able to execute all the moves that they need. I’m constantly adjusting and prioritizing the music, prioritizing the choreography, prioritizing the dancers; it is a shifting thing at every moment in the ballet.
That flexibility is a really important part of my job and being able to not only react to what the live musicians are doing but to what the dancers on stage are doing too, and hopefully what you get is a slightly different show every single night, where the music-making is stellar and the dancers are being given exactly what they need to accurately fulfill the choreography.
What do you feel like you’ve learned from this first season with the Cincinnati Ballet? Are there any shows you’re looking forward to in the next season?
This first season for me has been a lot of learning about the team that I’m working with. So, working with [Artistic Director] Cervilio [Miguel Amador], working with [President and CEO] Debbie [Brant], and then all of your staff, and then getting to know the dancers who are in the company. I feel very lucky because it’s a phenomenal team and I love the direction that the company is heading. I’m really honored to be included in that journey. To that end, our big story ballet that we’re doing next year is the great Romeo and Juliet—one of the many programs next season—which is, to many, sort of the pinnacle of ballet music and storytelling. Certainly it’s the most beloved ballet score that we have on the musician side of things, and I know that the orchestra is going to be just performing so beautifully all of that music. That’s what I’m looking forward to the most.
Speaking about the direction of the company, you took on this role following Carmon DeLeone, who held the position for more than 50 years. What are you going to do to set yourself apart? What kind of legacy do you want to leave on the company?
We all understand the importance of live music in the world of ballet, right? Without music, there is no dance. I perceive an amazing opportunity to grow the music department at Cincinnati Ballet, have more live music in the studio every single day, and have more live music in our productions—not all of our productions have live music. I’m working toward a model where ideally we have live music in all, or almost all, of our productions. That’s really the thing that I hope defines my time as music director here. I’m just trying to passionately share with the fans and patrons of the ballet why I feel music is such an important part of ballet.
What did the ballet’s relationship with music look like before you came on board? What did it look like in rehearsals and studios?
I would just say that it’s often a financial burden for ballet companies to have all of their rehearsals to live music, which is usually done in the form of a pianist. I’m trying to bring Cincinnati Ballet up to that next level, which involves having live music in all of the rehearsals. So when a dancer is preparing, for example, for Swan Lake, what you want in an ideal situation is, as they’re learning the ballet and they’re starting to get their coaching with artistic staff, that they have a pianist there who’s realizing the orchestra score, which enables them to learn to live music. It really changes how they dance. It just means that it’s not the same every day, it means they have to be adapting and making musical decisions as dancers in every moment rather than what has tended to happen, which is to have rehearsals with recordings of the orchestra that is the same every single time. While that’s a great stand-in in some ways, in other ways it does change the way that the dancers are learning things, and it doesn’t teach them how to listen and respond, because it’s just the same every single time.
What difference have you noticed in how the dancers rehearse using actual live music?
I think they would be the first people to say how much different and how much better it is with live music in the studios while they’re preparing, just because we’re all human and when there’s a human element creating the music, it just makes the entire process more dynamic. I definitely noticed right away when we started adding music. You can tell that they’re really listening in a different way and responding. That kind of exchange is amazing to witness.
In your work as a composer and a violinist, what has conducting taught you about your own musical performance and creation and vice versa?
I would say it’s mostly vice versa to be honest. I derive pretty much every philosophy that I have as a conductor from my experience being a violinist, and that experience also informs my composing. I feel like without my training and experience as a violinist, I don’t think I’d be able to do any of these other things. That’s the core of everything that I do and the guiding principle all comes from being a player.
Part of the reason I’m still hanging on to playing the violin is so I can remind myself, what does it feel like to play with others? What does it feel like to have that tactile connection to the music? Because as a conductor, you’re not really making sound, it’s everybody else who’s making sound, and you’re just guiding them to make the sound. It’s important that I keep the sound-making device nearby at all times, and whenever I travel to Cincinnati or anywhere, the violin comes with me.
Tell me about the string octet you composed for the Boston Chamber Music Society premiering on May 10.
It’s my response to the divisive climate that we are in right now. It’s called “The Commons,” which, on surface level, is a reference to the Boston Commons, a famous public space that is right in downtown where a lot of civic activism happens. A lot of cities have commons, and commons are usually just places of public gatherings and also places where protests tend to happen.
I’m trying to create a journey that represents through sound what happens when all of us work together to achieve a greater means. There’s sort of solo voices that are crying out in the beginning that get suppressed by a dark cloud of sound, but as the piece progresses, more of the voices join together until there’s too many of them and there’s not enough players to oppress the rest of them, if that makes sense. Then, as everybody is suddenly, finally, playing together, then they all play a unison melody and then there’s a big dance. It’s a metaphor for what happens when we work together.
You posted a video on Instagram recently about advantages you’ve had growing up that enabled you to succeed as a musician, like your parents paying for lessons and instruments and education, and acknowledging that the classical music industry has financial barriers to entry which can make it inaccessible. Why is it important to you to acknowledge these advantages that you have in the field, and what advice do you give to younger musicians who are attempting to navigate these barriers themselves?
I do think that it can be really easy to assume that the people who have “succeeded” in the industry are the most talented or have worked the hardest. The reason why I made that post is because I believe that it is more complicated than that. It’s especially important for leaders—not just in classical music, to be honest, but leaders of any field—to remember that very often, part of the reason for their success is because they had help and because some amount of luck was involved, in addition to their efforts, in addition to their hard work.
The reason why I think it’s important for leaders especially to remember that is because when you have the privilege of making decisions that affect other people, it will help you to make a more informed decision that is more empathetic of others when you realize that it wasn’t just you that got there. A lot of it comes from my attempts to withhold judgment and consider , instead of judging others, how I might lift them up and perhaps give them opportunities that they didn’t have, that I had, that allowed me to succeed. When we’re talking about who we give opportunities to in classical music, we can’t have those conversations without considering the financial barriers to entry and also how we help people. The how of it can only be answered by acknowledging that there are these barriers to entry.
It would be amazing to be in a world where everybody could just pursue art if they wanted to and not have to worry about making a living, not have to worry about if they can afford to do this, and we could just have an equitable, completely meritocratic system. I wish that we lived in that world, but we don’t. So, especially for people who are in positions of power, we should be thinking, How do we utilize our positions of power to help people who haven’t had the opportunities that we have, so we can make it a more equitable field.
How are you doing that in your work? Is that one of the tenets of the BFO?
The Boston Festival Orchestra has a whole outreach program called BFO Music Reach. We’re trying to grow it right now, because these are exactly our aspirations. Right now, we are going into the community of Boston and presenting music education workshops and performances that are actually directly in the communities that we’re serving. So, rather than asking them to come to a concert hall or travel, we’re actually going straight to them. We found that trying to eliminate the geographical barriers has been very helpful in increasing our impact. That’s absolutely our philosophy there.
It’s so interesting because it seems like I’ve just come to a place in my career, literally this year, where I’m now in a position of power where I could have this kind of influence and make this kind of impact. Part of the reason I made that video is because I’m now trying to challenge myself to think about these things and figure out, what am I going to actually do about this? While philanthropy is great, I’m trying to think of what I can do with my positions and my resources that I have to actually make these changes. I’m in that process right now. I think I’m craving stepping into some mentorship roles. That’s something that’s been on my mind a lot. And also, I’m very much trying to be an open book about all the things I’ve done to get to where I am. But I’m just at the beginning of that journey trying to figure out how to give back. If you check in with me in a year or two, maybe I’ll have more concrete answers.
Do you have thoughts in mind for how mentorship could play out in Cincinnati?
I am very interested in trying to teach the art of ballet conducting to more conducting students. That may look like trying to connect with the College-Conservatory of Music, for example, and trying to see if we can give more opportunities to the conducting students there, and just trying to lead with the spirit of collaboration, trying to open our doors to as many people as possible.
I also started this series that we did right before Swan Lake, the first one ever, called Behind the Baton, and it’s like my lecture performance series that I’m trying to do to reveal more behind-the-scenes knowledge about what makes the scores of these ballets so amazing and also illuminate the connection between the music and the choreography. Trying to make those events accessible to people is important to me as well, and trying to demystify everything about classical music in general has always been my personal artistic mission. I love talking with audiences, or just people one on one, to try to give them the tools that I’ve been given through my education to understand what it is about this music that has allowed it to exist for all of these centuries in the hearts of the public.
What was the reaction to the first Behind the Baton?
It was wonderful. The audience was so engaged and I felt like they were perhaps considering the production of Swan Lake in a different way because I was really coming at it from a purely musical angle. We had live music and we also had some dancers doing demonstrations, and I was able to make some connections between the music and the choreography. I could see in their faces the recognition, the understanding of “Oh, I see how the music and choreography work together.” I really thought that they were hungry for more of that. We’re going to bring it back for next year.
I found another video you posted of your 2025 ins and outs (conductors edition) where you said things like batons, conducting competitions, pantsuits, and encores are all out in favor of Harry Potter wands, investing in green energy, looking hot, and going to Aruba. What’s in for 2026?
I will say that I have been thinking so much about stepping into these leadership roles that when I was applying to them, I felt just an incredible amount of imposter syndrome. You know, Who do I think I am? Kind of this negative self-talk and wondering if I’m crazy for putting my name in the pot to be considered for these things. Obviously on the other side, having that conversation that there’s people interested in the work that I’m doing.
What I owe to myself now in this next year is to stop that negative self-talk and the imposter syndrome and just let that go and try to really think about my philosophy as a leader and what kind of person I want to be in these leadership positions because I really believe that leading by example is the best way to be a leader rather than telling everybody how they should be. You should just show them through your own actions. I’m trying to challenge myself to be that person and create that community around me of like-minded artists and administrators and leaders who feel like they want to lead with that same attitude. I’m just trying to build that village and figure out exactly who I am in these positions and not doubt myself so much anymore.
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