Klaus Mäkelä
conductor
Vita
The Finnish conductor and cellist Klaus Mäkelä was born in Helsinki in 1996 into a family of musicians and studied at the Sibelius Academy in his hometown. His conducting teacher was Jorma Panula, and he was taught cello by 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; he became Chief Conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic in 2020 and since 2021 he has been Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris. In 2022, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra announced that Mäkelä would take up the position of Chief Conductor in 2027, continuing to work closely with the orchestra as Artistic Partner until then. Together with the Amsterdam orchestra, he will organize the concerts at the Easter Festival in Baden-Baden beginning in 2026. He will also take up the position of Chief Conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2027. Klaus Mäkelä, who was a portrait artist at the Vienna Musikverein, the Essen Philharmonic, and the Bozar in Brussels last season, guest conducts many leading ensembles, including the New York Philharmonic, the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and the Cleveland Orchestra. His repertoire ranges from the Baroque through the great symphonies of the Romantic and late-Romantic periods to contemporary music. He has focused on compositions by Pascal Dusapin, Thomas Larcher, Magnus Lindberg, and Kaija Saariaho, and in the 2024-25 season premiered works by Thierry Escaich and Charlotte Bray. Mäkelä’s recording of the Sibelius symphonies with the Oslo Philharmonic has won multiple awards; his accounts of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and Ravel’s La Valse with the Orchestre de Paris appeared in June 2025. As a cellist, Mäkelä works with members of the Oslo Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and also performs every summer at the Verbier Festival.
Lucerne Festival debut in the summer of 2023 conducting the Oslo Philharmonic, which he led in two concerts.
June 2025
Magazine
