Recipient of the prestigious 2023 Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award, Keitaro Harada is armed with intensity and depth, consistently providing riveting concerts and opera performances in Asia, the Americas, and Europe. And as Music and Director of the Savannah Philharmonic since the 2020-21 season—he recently renewed his contract through the 2026-27 season—Harada has transformed the caliber of the orchestra and energized its audiences throughout the community with his imaginative programs and charismatic presence. Associate of the Tokyo SymphonyOrchestra, Harada has forged a close connection with the NHK Symphony Orchestra with whom he appears frequently and has recorded three albums. His eclectic musical scope ranges from symphony, opera, and chamber music to pops, film scores, educational outreach, and multidisciplinary projects, all of which enrich his programming.

Recent and upcoming highlights include engagements with the symphony orchestras of Houston, Seattle, NHK, Yomiuri Nippon, Osaka, Tokyo, Hawaii, Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Memphis, Louisiana, Charlotte, West Virginia, Tucson, Phoenix, and Virginia, as well as the Osaka Philharmonic, Kanagawa Philharmonic, Nagoya Philharmonic, New Japan Philharmonic, Tokyo Philharmonic, and Orquesta Filarmónica de Sonora in Mexico. Harada has also recorded two CDs with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra and one with Japan Philharmonic Orchestra.

Well versed in the operatic canon, Harada was a Seiji Ozawa Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center in 2010, where he delivered a critically acclaimed performance of Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos. Since then, he has led performances ofMozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, Bizet’s Carmen, and Britten’s Turn of the Screw at North Carolina Opera. In 2017, he led performances of Mazzoli’s Song from the Uproar at Cincinnati Opera, followed by Carmen at Bulgaria’s Sofia National Opera, subsequently conducting the production on a tour of Japan in 2018. In past seasons and as Associate Conductor of Arizona Opera, he conducted Don Pasquale, La fille du régiment, and Tosca.

In the 2022–23 season, he made his debut at Nikikai Opera in Tokyo, leading performances of Orphée aux enfers. Upcoming appearances include Madama Butterfly at the Cincinnati Opera; La funciulla del West at the North Carolina Opera; and La fille du régiment at Nissay Theatre in Tokyo.

Harada was Associate Conductor for four years at the Cincinnati Symphony and Pops, where he regularly assisted with Music Director Louis Langrée and collaborated with James Conlon and Juanjo Mena at the orchestra’s annual May Festival. He is a six-time recipient of The Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Award, and in 2013 was invited to the Bruno Walter National Conductor Preview. He studied with Lorin Maazel at Castleton Festival and Fabio Luisi at the Pacific Music Festival, where, at Valery Gergiev’s invitation, he served on the festival’s faculty in 2016, 2018, and 2021.

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