Biography
Keitaro Harada is increasingly recognized as a conducting luminary of the next generation. A student of Lorin Maazel at Castleton Festival and recipient of the Seiji Ozawa Conducting Fellowship at Tanglewood Music Festival, Harada’s credentials are exemplary. At Tanglewood he assisted Christoph von Dohnanyi in the production of Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos and conducted the closing performance garnering this praise from The Boston Musical Intelligencer: “perfect timing, dramatic dynamics, and unerring coordination of the musical stagecraft.” And, this review from Opera News: ”For the third and final performance of Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos … rising young Japanese conductor Keitaro Harada, a student in the TMC program, got his turn to lead the forces prepared by Christoph von Dohnányi. Harada’s command of the score was total, from the uncommonly beautiful legato and sweep of the opening orchestral phrases, hinting at the inspired, ecstatic melodies created by the character known as the Composer, to the carefully controlled climaxes of the final duet, in which Ariadne and Bacchus join in uncomprehending ecstasy.”
In 2011, Harada was one of ten semi-finalists invited by Ricardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony to participate in the First Chicago Symphony Orchestra Solti International Conducting Competition and was one of four international conductors for the Pacific Music Festival 2011 Conducting Academy in Sapporo, Japan. He is a three-time winner of the International Conductors Workshop and Competition in Georgia. He received an Honorable Mention in the International Academy of Advanced Conducting in St. Petersburg, Russia. In September 2009, Harada was a semi-finalist for the Fourth Eduardo Mata International Conducting Competition in Mexico City, Mexico.
As a Seiji Ozawa Conducting Fellow recipient at Tanglewood Music Festival 2010, he prepared Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos for Christoph von Dohnanyi. Harada conducted many of the Festival Orchestra concerts including Antoniou’s Concertino for Double Bass with Boston Symphony Orchestra principal double bass, Edwin Barker. The New York Times wrote, “…with Jacob Druckman’s “Aureole” (1979), a score rich in hazy mystery and textural allure, qualities that Keitaro Harada had no trouble coaxing from the orchestra.”
As an opera conductor, Harada assists and conducts staging at Arizona Opera including La Bohème, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte and Mikado. He was an Apprentice Conductor to Lorin Maazel at the inaugural Castleton Festival where he studied four Britten chamber operas. He made his professional opera debut in May 2011 with North Carolina Opera for Britten’s Turn of the Screw and received this review: ”Conductor Keitaro Harada led a tightly sprung, supremely confident performance, moving inevitably along the work’s strange pathways, including scenes accompanied only by timpani, bells or harp. The chamber orchestra filled Durham’s Carolina Theatre with immensely impressive playing.” News Observer, North Carolina
Harada is currently the Principal Guest Conductor for the Sierra Vista Symphony Orchestra, Assistant Conductor for Arizona Opera and Music Director for Phoenix Youth Symphony, an organization internationally recognized as one of the premiere youth orchestras in the United States. He previously served as Conductor of Arizona Symphony, UA Philharmonic Orchestra, and Mercer/Macon Symphony Youth Orchestra, and Assistant Conductor of the Tucson Symphony and Macon Symphony Orchestras.
A recent featured alumni guest on National Public Radio’s FROM THE TOP, a video and audio documentary on Harada’s career can be found on their website: www.fromthetop.org.
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