Klaus Mäkelä

The Finnish conductor and cellist Klaus Mäkelä, who was born in 1996 in Helsinki to a family of musicians, studied at the Sibelius Academy. His conducting teacher was Jorma Panula, and he studied cello under Marko Ylönen, Timo Hanhinen, and Hannu Kiiski. Mäkelä shifted his artistic focus to orchestral conducting at an early age. From 2017 to 2021, he served as Principal Guest Conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra; in 2020, he took over as Music Director of the Oslo Philharmonic; he has served as Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris since 2021. In 2022, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra announced that Mäkelä will assume the position of Chief Conductor in 2027; until then, he is working closely with the orchestra as Artistic Partner. Since 2026, he and the Amsterdam orchestra have been responsible for the Easter Festival concerts in Baden-Baden. In 2027, he will also take the helm at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Mäkelä has appeared as a guest conductor with many leading orchestras, including the New York, Berlin, and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras; the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; and the Cleveland Orchestra. In the summer of 2026, he made his debut as an opera conductor at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence with Strauss’s Frau ohne Schatten and Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle. Mäkelä’s repertoire ranges from the Baroque through the great symphonies of the Romantic and Late Romantic eras to contemporary music. He focuses on works by Pierre Boulez, Pascal Dusapin, Thierry Escaich, and Kaija Saariaho, and in the 2026-27 season will premiere works by Thomas Larcher and Magnus Lindberg. Mäkelä’s recording of the Sibelius symphonies with the Oslo Philharmonic has won multiple awards; in November 2025, he released Mahler’s Eighth Symphony with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. As a cellist, Mäkelä has collaborated with members of the Oslo Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and he has appeared repeatedly at the Verbier Festival.

Lucerne Festival debut in the summer of 2023 with the Oslo Philharmonic, which he led in a pair of concerts; his most recent appearances here were in the summer of 2025 in two concerts with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra featured works by Mahler and Bartók, among others.

June 2026