Back to Karina Canellakis Karina Canellakis, Conductor

Karina Canellakis

Conductor

Internationally acclaimed for her emotionally charged performances, technical command and interpretive depth, Karina Canellakis regularly appears with the top orchestras of North America, Europe, the UK and Australia. She is the Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, and concurrently holds the title of Principal Guest Conductor with both the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin.

Upcoming debuts include the Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood and Cleveland Orchestra at Blossom Festival in summer 2021, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, and San Francisco Symphony. In Europe, she debuts with the Orchestre National de France at Festival de Saint-Denis and a fully staged production of Onegin at Théâtre des Champs-Elysée as well as with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Frankfurt Radio Symphony.

On the operatic stage, Karina has conducted Die Zauberflöte and a fully staged production of Verdi Requiem with the Zurich Opera, Don Giovanni and Le nozze di Figaro with Curtis Opera Theatre, and gave the world premiere of David Lang’s opera The Loser at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. She also led Peter Maxwell Davies’ final opera The Hogboon with the Luxembourg Philharmonic.

Since winning the Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award in 2016, Canellakis has worked with leading orchestras around the world, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, Toronto Symphony, London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique du Radio France, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Oslo Philharmonic, and the Melbourne and Sydney symphony orchestras.

Already known to many in the classical music world for her virtuoso violin playing, Canellakis was initially encouraged to pursue conducting by Sir Simon Rattle while she played regularly in the Berlin Philharmonic’s Orchester-Akademie for two years. She plays a 1782 Mantegazza violin on loan from a private patron.