Kazuki Yamada

Conductor Kazuki Yamada began his career in his native Japan but quickly established relationships with major European orchestras in the 2010s. He is the chief conductor and music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in Britain. Yamada was born on January 26, 1979, in Hadano in Japan's Kanagawa Prefecture. Among Japanese conductors who have succeeded in the West, he is notable in that his training was exclusively Japanese. Yamada attended the Tokyo University of the Arts, majoring in percussion but also taking conducting courses with Ken-Ichiro Kobayashi and Yoko Matsuo. He and a group of other students founded the TOMATO Philharmonic Orchestra, naming Yamada as its music director. The group flourished, changed its name to the Yokohama Sinfonietta, and turned professional in 2011. Yamada scored a breakthrough in the West when he won the Besançon International Conducting Competition in France in 2009. He won several more prizes in Japan and served as principal conductor of the Japan Philharmonic and the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra in the 2010s. In 2010, Yamada guest conducted the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in Switzerland, and he served as that group's principal guest conductor from 2012 to 2017. His debut recording came in 2013 on the Exton label with the Czech Philharmonic, featuring works by Glazunov, Khachaturian, and Vassily Kalinnikov, and he made several recordings with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande for the PentaTone label. Yamada has appeared as a guest conductor in most major European countries, with such prestigious groups as the Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester Berlin, the Tonkünstler Orchester in Vienna, and the Orchestre de Paris. He became the principal guest conductor of the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra in 2013, ascended to principal conductor in 2016, and continued to hold that position as of the mid-2020s. After several guest appearances, Yamada became the principal guest conductor of England's City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in 2018. He became the chief conductor in 2023 and added the title of artistic director to his resume the following year. Yamada has recorded for various labels, including Octavia and Naxos, and in 2024, he led the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic in the world-recorded premiere of Saint-Saëns' final opera Déjanire on the Palazzetto Bru Zane label. ~ James Manheim, Rovi