Francesco Lecce-Chong is a rising conductor in the early 2020s, serving as music director of two orchestras by age 30 and appearing as a guest with many others. He has a strong commitment to contemporary music.

Lecce-Chong was born in San Francisco in 1988 but grew up in Boulder, Colorado. His father, Curtis Chong, is an architect; his mother, Catherine Lecce-Chong, is an artist. Francesco was an only child. Neither parent was musical, but they enjoyed classical music and owned a piano and a recorded set of Beethoven symphonies conducted by Herbert von Karajan; Lecce-Chong became obsessed with the latter. At first, he aspired to a career as a professional baseball player, but he switched to music after joining a youth orchestra in Boulder, playing piano, violin, and viola. The orchestra's conductor gave him conducting lessons, and he took his first turn on the podium when he was 16. Lecce-Chong went on to the Mannes College of Music in New York and to the Curtis Institute of Music, studying with Otto-Werner Mueller. He studied further at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Italy and benefited from mentorship or instruction from such conductors as Bernard Haitink, David Zinman, and Michael Tilson Thomas.

After completing his studies, Lecce-Chong landed assistant conductor posts with the Milwaukee Symphony (for four years, under Edo de Waart) and then the Pittsburgh Symphony (for three, under Manfred Honeck). While in the latter city, he served as music director of the Pittsburgh Youth Symphony. In 2017, he was appointed music director of the Santa Rosa Symphony Orchestra in northern California, and the following year, after a search encompassing some 200 candidates, he was named to the same position with the Eugene Symphony Orchestra. At that time, he stepped away from his Pittsburgh posts. Lecce-Chong has made appearances as a guest conductor with a large number of orchestras internationally, including the New York Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony, and Toronto Symphony. In 2022, Lecce-Chong made his recording debut, leading the Santa Rosa Symphony on the album Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: Cello Concerto and Other Works. He has energetically commissioned new music for performance by that group. Lecce-Chong's plans for the 2022-2023 season include debuts with the Kansas City Symphony, Detroit Symphony, and Knoxville Symphony, among other ensembles. ~ James Manheim, Rovi