Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla

Born into a Lithuanian family of musicians in 1986, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla was initially trained as a choral conductor at the Čiurlionis School of Arts in her native city of Vilnius. She then additionally undertook her study of orchestral conducting in Graz and Bologna, at the Leipzig Academy of Music with Ulrich Windfuhr, and at Zurich University of the Arts with Johannes Schlaefli. Her first professional positions led her to the Theater Heidelberg and the Konzert Theater Bern as a conductor. After Gražinytė-Tyla won the Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award in 2012, the Salzburg Landestheater appointed her Music Director. She simultaneously began her collaboration with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which engaged her as Associate Conductor. From 2016 to 2022, Gražinytė-Tyla served as Music Director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, with which she has remained associated as Principal Guest Conductor, including a European tour in the spring of 2023. She has enjoyed a close collaboration with the Kremerata Baltica and Gidon Kremer since 2013. At the Salzburg Festival, she has performed Britten’s War Requiem with the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra. Gražinytė-Tyla has conducted the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, the Berlin Konzerthaus Orchestra, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, the Orchestra Nazionale dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia, and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. She debuted with the Munich Philharmonic and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in the 2022-23 season and will make her first appearance with the New York Philharmonic in the fall of 2023. She performed for the first time at the Bavarian Staatsoper in 2022 with Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen and will conduct Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande there in 2024. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla received the Conductor Award of the Royal Philharmonic Society in 2019. Her recording of Weinberg’s Symphonies Nos. 2 and 21 won the Gramophone Award and the Opus Klassik.

Lucerne Festival debut on 21 August 2016 as part of the “PrimaDonna” Special Event Day, conducting the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in Šerkšnytė’s De profundis and Beethoven’s Pastoral.

July 2023