This concert is the North Carolina Symphony debut for Anna Handler.

Anna Handler is a German-Colombian conductor and pianist who was raised in Munich and has been a Dudamel Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the 2023/24 season. From September 2024, she begins her tenure as Assistant Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), making her BSO debut at the Tanglewood Center in 2025.

Handler graduated from The Juilliard School in May 2023. There she received mentorship from David Robertson and was the first conductor ever to receive the Juilliard Kovner Fellowship for outstanding students of classical music.

Following her debut at the Salzburg Festival in 2022 as musical director of the Káťa Kabanová-Camp for opera students, Handler was immediately re-engaged to conduct new productions of Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges (2023) and Orff's Die Kluge (2024). Further 2023/24 highlights include the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Grazer Philharmoniker, and Münchner Rundfunkorchester. 

As founder and director of the ensemble Enigma Classica, Handler has collaborated with soloists including Arabella Steinbacher, Daniel Müller-Schott, and Sabine Meyer. Together with her team at Enigma Classica, Handler presented an interdisciplinary project on music education, featuring real-time generative video animation, at the Festival of Young Artists Bayreuth in 2022. 

Handler studied piano and conducting at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, the Accademia Pianistica di Imola, the Folkwang University of the Arts, and the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt Weimar.