Elias Grandy new Chief Conductor of Sapporo Symphony Orchestra
The conductor and Eisler alumnus will become chief conductor of the Sapporo Symphony Orchestra, based in Hokkaido, Japan, in April 2025. In the 2023/2024 season, he will be Conductor in Residence of the Robert Schumann Philharmonic; from 2015 to 2023, he was General Music Director at the Heidelberg Theatre and Orchestra. Born in Munich, he studied conducting at the Eisler with Prof. Hans-Dieter Baum in Berlin as well as violoncello, music theory and chamber music in Basel and Munich.
As an academist with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, he played under conductors such as Mariss Jansons, Riccardo Muti and Bernard Haitink. He deepened his training through master classes with Menahem Pressler, Walter Levin, Peter Gülke and Fabio Luisi, who invited him to the Conducting Academy of the Pacific Music Festival in Japan. Grandy is a prizewinner of the 7th Sir Georg Solti International Conducting Competition in Frankfurt.
From 2011 to 2015 he was Kapellmeister at the Staatstheater Darmstadt. Most recently, he made conducting debuts with the Vienna Symphony, Osaka Philharmonic and Minnesota Orchestra, and was guest conductor at the opera houses in Frankfurt, Essen, Chemnitz and Portland in 2022/2023. In his last season as General Music Director in Heidelberg, Elias Grandy conducted Tales of Hoffmann and The Love for Three Oranges, as well as a series of concerts focusing on women composers.
Future appearances include projects with the hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken, Bundesjugendorchester, Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Orquesta Filarmonica de Buenos Aires, Utah Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Qatar Philharmonic and at the Semperoper Dresden.