Karina Canellakis

Born in New York City in 1981 and the daughter of a conductor and a pianist, Karina Canellakis began her career as a violinist. She studied with Ida Kavafian at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and was a scholarship holder at the Karajan Academy of the Berliner Philharmoniker. There, Sir Simon Rattle encouraged her to turn to conducting. From 2011 to 2013, she completed the conducting program at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, where her teachers included Alan Gilbert; she also took part in Bernard Haitink’s master class at the Lucerne Easter Festival. In 2014, she was appointed Assistant Conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and in 2015 she made her European debut conducting the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. After winning the Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award in 2016, Canellakis made her debut at the BBC Proms and with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin the following year, which engaged her as Principal Guest Conductor from 2019 to 2023. Since 2019, she has been Chief Conductor of the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, where she has extended her contract until 2031. She has also served as Principal Guest Conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra since 2021. Karina Canellakis has already conducted such renowned ensembles as the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics, the Boston and Chicago Symphony Orchestras, and the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras. In the 2024-25 season, she made her debuts with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, conducting the latter’s televised New Year’s Eve concert. In the opera field, she focused last season on Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, where she led Les Siècles. Her latest recording, which was released in April 2025, is also devoted to music theater and features Bartók’s Bluebeard's Castle.

June 2025