Born in Singapore, he studied composition with Leung Yun Ping, conducting with Leonid Korchmar at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and Ham Shinnik at Yale University, as well as Baroque music and harpsichord at the Fiesole Conservatory in Italy.
He won first place at the Besançon International Conducting Competition in 2007, where he also received the Audience Prize and the Orchestra Prize. He also won top prizes at the Antonio Pedrotti International Conducting Competition in 2006 and the Arthur Toscanini International Conducting Competition in 2008. He served as Music Director of the Orchestre de Bretagne from 2012 to 2015, and has been Music Director and Chief conductor of the Sichuan Symphony Orchestra since 2016.
In recent years, he has guest-conducted with the London Philharmonic and Concertos Lamoureux, toured the Thuringian Philharmonic in Germany and Belgium, and conducted the National Grand Theatre Orchestra in a performance commemorating the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.
He has been invited by Valery Gergiev to regularly guest conductor the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, and has conducted the London Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonia Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Philharmonia de Radio France, Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin, Munich Radio Orchestra, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, and Giuseppe Verdi Symphony Orchestra of Milan, among others. In Japan, he has guest conductored with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Japan Philharmonic Orchestra, New Japan Philharmonic, and Kyushu Symphony Orchestra. His operatic works include Don Giovanni and Rigoletto at the Mariinsky Theatre, Carmen at the Estonian National Opera, The Magic Flute and The Diary of Nijinsky at the Opéra National de Bordeaux, The Flying Dutchman at the Lyric Opera of Singapore, and Cosi fan tutte at the Opéra de Toulon.
In recent years, he has released many recordings with Naxos, was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2016, and is attracting attention as one of the most active conductors in Asia. In 2015, he was awarded the Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government.