Karina Canellakis

Winner of the 2016 Sir George Solti Conducting Award, Karina Canellakis has rapidly gained international recognition as one of today's most dynamic and exciting young American conductors. She served for two seasons as Assistant Conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra concluding her tenure at the end of the 2015/16 season.

Highlights of the 2016/17 season include her debuts with the Swedish Radio Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Orchestre National de Lyon and the symphony orchestras of the City of Birmingham, Trondheim, Kristiansand, Malmö, Toronto, Vancouver and Milwaukee. She will conduct Verdi's Requiem at the Zurich Opera House, and opera projects including the premiere of David Lang's the loser at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and Peter Maxwell Davies' new and final opera The Hogboon with the Luxembourg Philharmonic.

A virtuoso violinist, Canellakis was encouraged to pursue conducting by Sir Simon Rattle while a member of Berlin Philharmonic's Orchester-Akademie. She played regularly in both the Berlin Philharmonic and Chicago Symphony Orchestra for several years, and has appeared as guest concertmaster of the Bergen Philharmonic in Norway. She was the winner of the 2013 Taki Concordia Conducting Fellowship and served as a conducting fellow at Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Tanglewood Music Center in summer 2014. She speaks German, French and Italian, and is a graduate of both the Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School.