Conductor Keitaro Harada maintains a growing international presence throughout North America, Asia, Mexico, and Europe. The 2020–21 season marked the beginning of his tenure as Music & Artistic Director of the Savannah Philharmonic and Associate Conductor of the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, creating two cities—and two artistic anchors—where he will be based. His broad and eclectic musical scope ranges from symphonic, opera, and chamber works to pops, film scores, ballet, 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, 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.
Well versed in the operatic canon, Harada returns next season to conduct performances of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte with the North Carolina Opera, where 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 at the Cincinnati Opera, followed by Carmen at Bulgaria’s Sofia National Opera, subsequently leading the production on a tour of Japan in 2018. In past seasons and as Associate Conductor of the Arizona Opera, he conducted Don Pasquale, La fille du régiment, and Tosca. A 2010 Seiji Ozawa Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Festival, he led critically acclaimed performances of Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos. In the 2022–23 season, he makes his debut at the Nikikai Opera, conducting performances of Orphée aux enfers.
Harada recently completed his fourth and final season as Associate Conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony and Pops, where he regularly assisted 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 Gerrgiev’s invitation, he served on the festival’s faculty in 2016, 2018, and 2021. Harada has recorded three acclaimed albums with the NHK Symphony Orchestra.

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