Around the Music Festival

The City of Kyoto Symphony Orchestra has extended its contract with Nodoka Okisawa, the orchestra’s permanent conductor. Okisawa has just assumed the position of the orchestra’s 14th Permanent Conductor in April. With this contract renewal, her term of office until the end of March 2026 will be extended by three years to the end of March 2029.

Okizawa is 36 years old and was born in Misawa City, Aomori Prefecture. She studied at the Tokyo University of the Arts and the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin.

She then became the first woman to win the First Prize in the Conducting Division of the 2018 Tokyo International Music Competition The following year, in 2019, she won the first prize at the “Besançon International Competition for Young Conductors” in France.

She was awarded a scholarship from the Karajan Academy of the Berlin Philharmonic to become Kirill Petrenko’s assistant beginning in 2020. In 2022 she is filling in for the suddenly ill Petrenko, conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in a concert of solidarity with Ukraine at the Presidential Palace.

She is also set to assume the position of principal guest conductor of the “Seiji Ozawa Matsumoto Festival” starting this summer.

Regarding her future activities, she said, “I want to make it so that people will think, ‘That’s right, let’s go to Kyoto!’ to hear the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra.”

She also said with enthusiasm, “I will work hard to spread the experience of being fully immersed in music, which can only be had here, from Kyoto to the rest of Japan and the world.”

PHOTO：City of Kyoto Symphony Orchestra


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