Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla

Born in 1986 into a Lithuanian family of musicians, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla initially trained as a choral conductor at the Čiurlionis School of Arts in her native Vilnius and subsequently studied orchestral conducting in Graz and Bologna, at the University of Music and Theater in Leipzig with Ulrich Windfuhr, and at the Zurich University of the Arts with Johannes Schlaefli. Her first professional engagements took her to the Theater Heidelberg and the Konzert Theater Bern as a Kapellmeister. After winning the 2012 Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award, she was appointed Music Director of the Salzburg Landestheater. She also began her collaboration with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where she was engaged as Associate Conductor. From 2016 to 2022, Gražinytė-Tyla served as Music Director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, with which she continues to collaborate as an Associate Artist. She has conducted the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Munich Philharmonic, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, the Konzerthaus Orchestra in Berlin, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Orchestra Nazionale dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. Gražinytė-Tyla made her debuts with the Dresden Staatskapelle and the New York Philharmonic in 2023, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in 2024, and the Vienna Philharmonic in May 2025. She will perform with the Berliner Philharmoni­ker for the first time in 2026. Britten’s War Requiem marked her first appearance at the Salzburg Festival, where she also conducted Weinberg’s The Idiot in 2024. Other notable credits include Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen and Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande at the Bavarian Staatsoper and Weinberg’s The Passenger at the Teatro Real in Madrid. Gražinytė-Tyla received the Conductor Award from the Royal Philharmonic Society in 2019. She garnered a Gramophone Award and an Opus Klassik for her recording of Weinberg’s Symphonies No. 2 and 21. Her most recent album features Weinberg’s The Passenger and was released in January 2025.

Lucerne Festival debut on 21 August 2016 with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in a program of works by Šerkšnytė and Beethoven.

August 2025