2025 Guest Conductor, Daniela Candillari
Conductor Daniela Candillari brings her “confidence and apparently inexhaustible verve” (The New York Times) to the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium as Guest Conductor for the first 2 full-orchestra concerts of our 2025 Season. She is renowned for guiding groundbreaking world premieres “with a sure hand” (The New York Times) and providing “incisive leadership” (Wall Street Journal) to classical music’s most frequently performed masterpieces. Currently in her fourth season as Principal Conductor at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Candillari led the world premiere of This House with music by Ricky Ian Gordon and libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynn Nottage and her daughter, Ruby Aiyo Gerber.
In the 2025/26 season, Candillari debuts with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Canadian Opera Company, Liverpool Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, and Wuppertal Sinfonieorchester. She leads a new production of Puccini’s La bohème at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and returns to the Juilliard School.
Her 2024/25 season opened with Puccini’s Madama Butterfly at Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, followed by debuts with the Kansas City Symphony, Tucson Symphony Orchestra, and Louisiana Philharmonic. She led the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in the world premiere of Nina Shekhar’s Accordion Concerto, conducted Trinity Church’s resident orchestra NOVUS in the East Coast premiere of Gabriel Kahane’s emergency shelter intake form, and returned for concerts at the Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music.
The 2023–24 season brought rave reviews for Candillari’s “seamless” leadership (The New York Times) of two world premieres: 10 Days in a Madhouse by composer Rene Orth and librettist Hannah Moscovitch at Opera Philadelphia, and Jeanine Tesori and George Brant’s Grounded at Washington National Opera’s Kennedy Center—both company debuts. 10 Days in a Madhouse, about trailblazing reporter Nellie Bly, won the Best New Opera Award from the Music Critics Association of North America and was named the best classical music performance of 2023 by the Washington Post, which noted, “under the baton of Daniela Candillari, the ensemble swerved from lush, harmonically rich embraces of memory into disconcerting panic attacks of sound effects.” The Wall Street Journal praised her “expertly rendered” delivery of “Tesori’s colorful orchestration” in Grounded, a co-commission of the Metropolitan Opera.
Notable engagements from previous seasons include her New York Philharmonic debut in their inaugural season at the new David Geffen Hall, earning praise for her “enthusiastic, energetic yet sensitive direction” and “perfect control over the orchestra” (Broadway World). She has also debuted with the Metropolitan Opera and Deutsche Oper Berlin, and led productions with Lyric Opera of Chicago, Minnesota Opera, Detroit Opera, Orchestre Métropolitan Montreal, and
Classical Tahoe Festival. As Principal Opera Conductor at the Music Academy of the West from 2022 until 2024, she returned this season for a concert with the Academy Chamber Orchestra.
As a composer, Candillari has received commissions from established artists, including instrumentalists from the Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh Symphonies, as well as Lincoln Center’s three resident orchestras: the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and the New York City Ballet. She is deeply involved with Music Academy of the West’s programming for young artists and has recently participated in master classes and discussions at DePaul University, Chicago Humanities Festival, and Valissima Institute.
Daniela Candillari grew up in Serbia and Slovenia. She holds a Doctorate in Musicology from the Universität für Musik in Vienna, a Master of Music in Jazz Studies from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, and a Master of Music and Bachelor’s degree in Piano Performance from the Universität für Musik in Graz. A Fulbright Scholar, she was also awarded a TED Fellowship.
