The compelling conductor Gerald Karni received a silver medal and special mention at the Third International Antál Dorati Conducting Competition in Budapest in 2021 and was one of 20 conductors selected to participate in the Eighth International Jorma Panula Conducting Competition in Vaasa, Finland. He has worked with the MAV Symphony Budapest, Orchestra Svizzera Italiana, the Verbier Festival Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra, South Denmark Philharmonic, and Karlovy Vary Symphony among others.

In 2022, he was selected as a conducting fellow at the Verbier Festival, where he worked as an assistant conductor to Gianandrea Noseda, Gábor Takács-Nagy, and Sir Simon Rattle, receiving an invitation to return in 2023 where he will assist Klaus Mäkelä, James Gaffigan and Mikhail Pletnev.

Other formative mentors include Alan Gilbert, who engaged Karni as an assistant conductor at the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester and Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, and Daniel Barenboim, who directs the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra inwhich Karni is a violist. Karni will also assist Jaap van Zweden at the New York Philharmonic in the summer of 2023.

Gerald completed his bachelor’s degree at the Zurich University of the Arts, studying with Lawrence Power, and in June 2023 receives his master’s degree in Orchestral Conducting at the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana, in Lugano, working with Professor Marc Kissozcy. Karni is the recipient of a 2023 Georg Solti Career Assistance Award.