Conductor Keitaro Harada maintains a growing, international presence throughout North America, Asia, Mexico, and Europe. Recently named Music & Artistic Director Designate of Savannah Philharmonic, he will conduct the 2019-20 opening and closing concerts before his inaugural season in 2020-21. Harada’s broad scope of musical interest in symphonic, opera, chamber works, pops, film scores, ballet, educational, outreach, and multi-disciplinary projects leads to diverse and eclectic programs.
Recent and upcoming highlights include the symphony orchestras of Houston, NHK, Yomiuri Nippon, Osaka, Tokyo, Hawaii, Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Memphis, Louisiana, Charlotte, West Virginia, Tucson, Phoenix, Virginia, as well as the Osaka Philharmonic, Kanagawa Philharmonic, Nagoya Philharmonic, New Japan Philharmonic, Tokyo Philharmonic, and Orquesta Filarmónica de Sonora (México).
No stranger to the operatic cannon, Harada returns next season for Puccini’s La bohème with North Carolina Opera, for whom he has previously led productions of Pagliacci, Carmen and Britten’s Turn of the Screw. In 2017, he conducted Mazzoli’s Song from the Uproar for Cincinnati Opera, as well as run of Carmen for Bulgaria’s Sofia National Opera and Ballet that reprised with a Japan tour in fall 2018. In past seasons and as Associate Conductor of Arizona Opera, he led productions of Don Pasquale, Le Fille du Regiment, and Tosca. As a 2010 Seiji Ozawa Fellow at Tanglewood, Harada conducted critically-acclaimed performances of Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos.
Having completed his fourth season as Associate Conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops, Harada regularly assisted Music Director Louis Langrée, conducted the CSO and POPS, and collaborated with James Conlon and Juanjo Mena for the May Festival. He is a four-time recipient of The Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Award (2020, 2016, 2015, 2014), Bruno Walter National Conductor Preview (2013), the Seiji Ozawa Conducting Fellowship at Tanglewood Music Festival, and was a student of Lorin Maazel at Castleton Festival and Fabio Luisi at Pacific Music Festival. In 2018 and 2016, he was invited by Valery Gergiev to serve on the faculty of the Pacific Music Festival.