Molly Turner is a Chinese-born conductor and composer. Recently, she has conducted the Orchestre de Paris, Gstaad Festival Orchestra, Theater Orchester Biel Solothurn, Juilliard Orchestra, Dallas Opera Orchestra, Primrose International Viola Competition, Colburn Orchestra, and Eastern Festival Orchestra. Highlights of the 2022-23 season include a debut with San Francisco Symphony's SoundBox Series, a Concert Scolaire with Orchestre de Paris, conducting the premiere of her own new orchestra work with the Tacoma Youth Symphony, Colburn Chamber Music Society with David Rejano, and Cosi! Men Are Like That with opera company White Snake Projects. She has served as assistant conductor for the Berliner Philharmoniker, Orchestre de Paris, San Francisco Symphony, Utah Symphony, San Diego Symphony, National Polish Radio Symphony, Juilliard Orchestra, and Colburn Orchestra. In 2019, Molly was the youngest conductor invited for residency at the Dallas Opera’s Hart Institute for Women Conductors. She has assisted Esa-Pekka Salonen, David Robertson, Stéphane Denève, Yaniv Dinur, Rafael Payare, Nicholas McGegan, and Jeffrey Milarsky.

Molly is a devoted advocate for contemporary and modern music. She has collaborated with many living composers including Paul Novak, Max Vinetz, Lauren Vandervelden, Corey Chang, Sujin Kang, Webster Gadbois, and Sofia Ouyang and has a strong affinity for the music of Stravinsky, Bartok, and Lutoslawski. Molly is a member of the Colburn Contemporary Ensemble and has conducted works by Lou Harrison, Timo Andres, and Nina Young with them. As part of Juilliard’s ChoreoComp, Molly premiered four different dance pieces created by current student composers and choreographers and at Rice, she conducted and composed for Hear&Now: New Music.

In her own music she is interested in the balance between strictly dictated elements and more aleatoric notation. Her relationship to the standard repertoire is often integrated in subtle ways beneath the foreground of the music. A violinist and violist herself, she finds string instruments endlessly fascinating. Improvisation is a core part of her writing process and she often starts her work as voice memos or graphic scores. In 2018, her string quartet, The Shapes of Stories, was read by the Arditti Quartet. Her work has been heard in Benaroya Hall, Zipper Concert Hall, Duncan Recital Hall, the Moody Center for the Arts, and has been privately recorded.