Biography

As Assistant Conductor with Boston Ballet, Tianyi Ren conducts select performances and assists Music Director Mischa Santora throughout rehearsals and productions.

Ren earned a Master of Music in Orchestral Conducting from the New England Conservatory in May 2025, studying with Hugh Wolff. In 2024, he was selected as a Faber Young Conducting Fellow at the Salzburg Festival by members of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the American Austrian Foundation. Ren is also Artistic Director and Conductor of Helix Ensemble in Boston, an orchestra dedicated to placing orchestral repertoire in direct contact with contemporary life through interdisciplinary collaboration and concert design.

He has conducted professional orchestras in Europe and the United States and has taught conducting and coached chamber music in his native China. A graduate of the University of Chicago’s flagship program, Fundamentals: Issues and Texts, Ren received the Amy Kass Award for his scholarship on Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain. He is committed to artistic leadership and curation that rethinks Gesamtkunstwerk for the 21st century—not as spectacle, but as integration: music in active dialogue with movement, image, space, and idea.

Photo by Tianjiao Wang