Klaus Mäkelä

The Finnish conductor and cellist Klaus Mä­kelä, who was born in 1996 into a family of musicians in Helsinki, studied at the Sibe­lius Academy in his native city. His conducting teacher was Jorma Panula; Marko Ylönen, Timo Hanhinen, and Hannu Kiiski taught him cello. Mäkelä shifted his artistic focus early on to orchestral conducting. From 2017 to 2021, he was Principal Guest Conductor of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and, in 2020, took over as Chief Conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic; since 2021, he has served as Music Director of the Orchestre de Paris-Philharmonie. In the fall of 2022, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra announced that Mäkelä would take up the position of Chief Conductor in 2027 and is maintaining a close collaboration as Artistic Partner until then. He will join with the Amsterdam-based orchestra starting in 2026 for concerts at the Easter Festival in Baden-Baden. And in 2027 he will also become Music Director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Mäkelä performs with many top international orchestras, such as the New York Philharmonic, ­the Berlin and Munich Philharmonics, the Leipzig Gewand­haus Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, and the Cleveland Orchestra. His repertoire ranges from such Baroque masters as Lully and Locatelli through the great Romantic and late-Romantic symphonies to contemporary music. He has championed works by Pascal Dusapin, Thomas Larcher, Magnus Lindberg, and Kaija Saariaho and led world premieres by Unsuk Chin and Anna Thorvaldsdottir in the 2023-24 season. Mäkelä’s recording of the complete Sibelius symphonies with the Oslo Philharmonic has won several awards; his most recent recording, which appeared in June 2024, is of Violin Concertos by Sibelius and Prokofiev with Janine Jansen and the Oslo Philharmonic. As a cellist Mäkelä partners with members of the Oslo Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris-Philharmonie, and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra for occasional programs and each summer he performs at the Verbier Festival in chamber music concerts with fellow artists.

Lucerne Festival debut in the summer of 2023 conducting the Oslo Philharmonic, which he led in two concerts.

July 2024