Nodoka Okisawa

Nodoka Okisawa has been Chief Conductor of the City of Kyoto Symphony Orchestra since 2023, and her contract has now been extended a further three years until March 2029. In February 2024 she was also named as the first ever Principal Guest Conductor of the Matsumoto Festival by its’ founder, Seiji Ozawa. She is also General and Artistic Director of Aoiumi to mori Music Festival.

Upcoming debuts include The London Philharmonic, The Halle, Dortmund Philharmonic, Latvian National Symphony and The Boston Symphony Orchestras. She will also enjoy returns to Extremadura Symphony, Winnipeg Symphony and Melbourne Symphony. Upon returning to Australia she will also work with Tasmania Symphony and will go to New Zealand for the first time to work with the Auckland Philharmonia.

Other notable recent debuts include successes with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, NHK Symphony Orchestra, Kammerorchester Basel, Orchestre symphonique de Québec and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. She also returned to Münchner Symphoniker, having been Artist in Residence during the 2022/23 season.

Much in demand in Japan, Nodoka Okisawa enjoys working regularly with such orchestras as Yomiuri Nippon Symphony, Toyko Metropolitan Symphony, NHK Symphony, Japan Philharmonic and in February 2025 she conducted a full run of Bizet’s Carmen at Tokyo Nikikai Opera Foundation. She had previously worked at this house on Lehár's The Merry Widow. Her first encounter with the Saito Kinen Orchestra was at the 2022 Matsumoto festival, where she conducted Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro in a production by Laurent Pelly and at the 2025 Festival she conducted Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Nodoka Okisawa is the winner of the prestigious Concours international de jeunes chefs d'orchestre de Besançon 2019, where she was awarded the ‘Grand Prix’, the Orchestra Prize and the Audience Prize. Furthermore, in 2018, she won the Tokyo International Music Competition for Conducting, one of the most important international conducting competitions.

From 2020 to 2022, Nodoka Okisawa held a scholarship at the Karajan-Akademie of the Berliner Philharmoniker and was also assistant to Kirill Petrenko. In addition to her own concert projects together with the academy members of the Berliner Philharmoniker, she also conducted the Solidarity Concert for Ukraine in March 2022 with members of the Berliner Philharmoniker at the invitation of the Federal President of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Another highlight was the joint anniversary concert with Kirill Petrenko to mark the 50th anniversary of the Karajan-Akademie in May 2022.

Okisawa has attended masterclasses with Neeme Järvi, Paavo Järvi, and Kurt Masur. In 2019, she was selected for the Riccardo Muti Italian Opera Academy in Tokyo. She gained further experience in the past as assistant conductor of the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa, as well as with opera productions in Japan and Europe.

In 2023, Nodoka Okisawa was awarded the ‘Hideo Saito Memorial Fund Award’ by the Sony Music Foundation and in 2020 she received the Akeo Watanabe Music Foundation Award.

Born in Aomori, Japan, she learned to play the piano, cello, and oboe from an early age. She studied conducting at the Tokyo University of the Arts with Ken Takaseki and Tadaaki Otaka and graduated with a master’s degree. In 2019, she obtained her second master’s degree at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin under Christian Ehwald and Hans-Dieter Baum. Nodoka Okisawa lives in Berlin.

You can see Nodoka Okisawa live with the Auckland Philharmonia on Thursday 3 September at Organ Symphony.