Dalia Stasevska’s charismatic and dynamic musicianship has established her as a conductor of exceptional versatility. Chief Conductor of Lahti Symphony Orchestra and Artistic Director to the International Sibelius Festival, Dalia also holds the post of Principal Guest Conductor of BBC Symphony Orchestra. She has made regular appearances at the BBC Proms.
In 2024/25 season, Dalia guest conducts the Orchestre de Paris, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Oslo Philharmonic, Dresdner Philharmonie, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Helsinki Philharmonic and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. In North America, she returns to several orchestras including the Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and debuts with the New World Symphony.
Recent engagements have included orchestras such as New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra. In summer 2024, she toured the US appearing at Aspen Music Festival, Grand Teton Music Festival, Tanglewood (with Boston Symphony Orchestra) and the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in two concerts with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Performing works of contemporary composers is a core part of Dalia’s programming, and this season with Lahti Symphony Orchestra, they present works by Kaija Saariaho, Judith Weir, Missy Mazzoli, Andrea Tarrodi and Sauli Zinovjev, to name a few.
A passionate opera conductor, 2023 saw Dalia’s highly successful debut at the Glyndebourne Opera Festival with a revival of the iconic Peter Halls production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In previous seasons, she returned to Finnish National Opera and Ballet to conduct a double bill of Poulenc’s La voix humane and Weill’s Songs with Karita Mattila, and to Norske Opera to conduct Madama Butterfly and Lucia di Lammermoor. Other productions include Don Giovanni with Kungliga Opera Stockholm, directed by Ole Anders Tandberg, Cunning Little Vixen with Finnish National Opera and Sebastian Fagerlund’s Höstsonaten at the 2018 Baltic Sea Festival in Stockholm, featuring Anne-Sofie von Otter.
Her debut solo album Dalia’s Mixtape with BBC Symphony Orchestra released in August 2024 on Platoon, features ten tracks of some of the freshest sounds in contemporary music. Released one month at a time with music by genre-bending composers such as Anna Meredith, Caroline Shaw, Andrea Tarrodi, Noriko Koide, Judith Weir, Julius Eastman and others. Also in August, in a special collaboration with Joshua Bell and the INSO-Lviv Symphony Orchestra, Dalia released Thomas de Hartmann’s Violin Concerto on Pentatone Records. Together with Lahti Symphony Orchestra, she released two albums on BIS - piano concerti by Rautavaara and Martinů with pianist Olli Mustonen in June 2023, and the first volume of Helvi Leiviskä’s orchestral works in October 2023.
Dalia originally studied as a violinist and composer at the Tampere Conservatoire and, subsequently, violin, viola and conducting at the Sibelius Academy. As a conductor, her teachers include Jorma Panula and Leif Segerstam. In December 2018, she had the honour of conducting Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra at the Nobel Prize Ceremony in Stockholm. She was named one of The New York Times Breakout Stars and received the BBC Music Magazine’s Personality of the Year award in 2023, Alfred Kordelin Prize in 2022 and Royal Philharmonic Society’s Conductor Award in 2020.
Dalia was bestowed the Order of Princess Olga of the III degree by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in October 2021 for her significant personal contribution to the development of international cooperation, strengthening the prestige of Ukraine internationally and popularisation of its historical and cultural heritage. Since February 2022, she has actively been supporting Ukraine by raising donations to buy supplies and, on a number of occasions, delivering them herself.
Photo Credit: Sanna Lehto