SAVANNAH PHILHARMONIC
Music & Artistic Director
TOKYO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Permanent Conductor
AICHI CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
Principal Guest Conductor & Artistic Partner
DAYTON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA
Music & Artistic Director
Keitaro Harada is armed with intensity and depth, consistently providing riveting concerts and opera performances in Asia, the Americas and Europe. Named music director and artistic director designate for the Dayton Philharmonic for the 2024–25 season, Harada will begin a five-year tenure as Music and Artistic Director with the 2025–26 season and will lead Dayton Opera’s production of Aida in April 2025. As music director of the Savannah Philharmonic since the 2020–21 season, Harada has transformed the orchestra and energized its audiences throughout the community with his imaginative programs and charismatic presence. In 2024, Harada became permanent conductor of the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra. He has forged a close connection with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, with whom he appears frequently and has recorded three albums. Also in 2024, Harada became principal guest conductor and artistic partner for the Aichi Chamber Orchestra. His eclectic musical scope ranges from symphony, opera and chamber music to pops, film scores, educational outreach and multidisciplinary projects, all of which enrich his programming. Harada is a recipient of the 2023 Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award.
In the 2024–25 season, Harada debuts with the Adelaide Symphony and makes his subscription debut with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Recent and upcoming highlights include engagements with the symphony orchestras of Houston, Seattle, NHK, Yomiuri Nippon, Osaka, Tokyo, Hawaii, Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Memphis, Louisiana, Charlotte, West Virginia, Tucson, Phoenix and Virginia, as well as the Osaka Philharmonic, Kanagawa Philharmonic, Nagoya Philharmonic, Japan Philharmonic, New Japan Philharmonic, Tokyo Philharmonic and Orquesta Filarmónica de Sonora in Mexico.
Well versed in the operatic canon, Harada was a Seiji Ozawa Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center in 2010, where he delivered a critically acclaimed performance of Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos. Since then, he has led performances of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, Bizet’s Carmen and Britten’s The Turn of the Screw at North Carolina Opera. In 2017, he led performances of Mazzoli’s Song from the Uproar at Cincinnati Opera, followed by Carmen at Bulgaria’s Sofia National Opera and the production’s subsequent tour of Japan in 2018. In past seasons and as associate conductor of Arizona Opera, he conducted Don Pasquale, La fille du régiment and Tosca.
In the 2022–23 season, he made his debut at Nikikai Opera in Tokyo, leading performances of Orphée aux enfers, and he returned to Cincinnati Opera as part of an all-Japanese creative team to conduct a critically acclaimed Madama Butterfly. In 2024, he led La fanciulla del West at North Carolina Opera and La fille du régiment at Nissay Theatre in Tokyo.
Harada was associate conductor for four years at the Cincinnati Symphony and Pops, where he regularly assisted Music Director Louis Langrée and collaborated with James Conlon and Juanjo Mena at the annual May Festival. He is a six-time recipient of The Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Award, and, in 2013, he was invited to the Bruno Walter National Conductor Preview. Harada has released eight albums with various orchestras. He studied with Lorin Maazel at Castleton Festival and Fabio Luisi at the Pacific Music Festival, where, at Valery Gergiev’s invitation, he served on the festival’s faculty in 2016, 2018 and 2021.
Photo Credit: Shin Yamagishi