Mischa Santora

Conductor Mischa Santora combines 21st-century innovation with old-world artistry. He leads performances with the world's finest symphony, ballet, and opera orchestras. As music director of Boston Ballet since 2018, Mr. Santora conducts the Boston Ballet Orchestra in over 90 performances annually, with repertoire ranging from 19th-century story ballets to contemporary productions. As a composer, he premiered his work TOCCATA for Orchestra and Live Electronics with Boston Ballet in May 2024 in collaboration with choreographer Ken Ossola and electronic music artist Michael Cain. In addition, he has created compositions and soundscapes for renowned choreographers and visual artists including William Forsythe, Nanine Linning, and Shantell Martin. He also writes scores for theater productions and film projects.

Mr. Santora recently completed a decade-long tenure as artistic director of Minneapolis-based MacPhail Center for Music's Spotlight Series, a dynamic, interdisciplinary performance series showcasing faculty musicians alongside the most creative actors, dancers, writers, photographers, and visual artists in the Twin Cities. He also completed a multi-year tenure as artistic director of the Minnesota Bach Ensemble, where he enlivened the standard Baroque-era repertoire with commissioned works, cross-genre projects, and an emphasis on 18th century female composers. Today, Mr. Santora leads a collaborative project between Boston Ballet and MIT Media Lab harnessing cutting-edge technology and for creative purposes.

In North America Mr. Santora has appeared with the Philadelphia, Minnesota, and Louisville Orchestras; the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Houston, National, New Jersey, Kansas City, Phoenix, Indianapolis, Richmond, North Carolina, Des Moines, Hartford, and Princeton Symphonies; as well as the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia.

In Europe and the Middle East he has led the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the Basel and Lucerne Symphony Orchestras, the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra, the Budapest Matáv Symphony, the Miskolc Symphony, the Hungarian National Symphony Orchestra's Chorus, the Georgisches Kammerorchester Ingolstadt, and the Israel Chamber Orchestra.

In the Pacific Rim he was invited by the West Australian Opera Company to conduct a production of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. In addition he has appeared with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, the Taiwan National Philharmonic, and the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra in New Zealand. In Latin America he has guest conducted in Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Chile.

During his tenure as music director of the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra from 2000-2014 he led innovative productions of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, de Falla’s Master Peter’s Puppet Show, and Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. Frequently acting in a conductor/stage director role, Mr. Santora conceived productions for Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress.

Mr. Santora was associate conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra between 2003 and 2009, where he conducted numerous subscription concerts and fully staged operatic performances. As music director of the International Opera Festival Miskolc (Hungary) for three seasons starting in 2002, Mr. Santora has not only collaborated with many of the most established singers from Europe and Russia, but has also worked alongside artistic director Éva Marton, creating a new artistic profile for one of the most prestigious music festivals in Central Europe.

Between 1997 and 2002 Mr. Santora held the post of music director of both the New York Youth Symphony and the Juilliard Pre-College Orchestra, with performances at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. In addition, he has worked with some of the finest young orchestras around the world, including the New England Conservatory’s Philharmonia, Boston University Chamber Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of the Curtis Institute, Australian Youth Orchestra, RIAS Orchestra in Berlin, and the Jeunesses Musicales Orchestra Switzerland.

Mr. Santora’s career has been marked by his strong advocacy of New Music. Under his artistic supervision, the New York Youth Symphony’s award-winning First Music program (then chaired by John Corigliano) commissioned more than fifteen works, a tradition he continued in Cincinnati, Minneapolis, and Boston. In the Twin Cities, he has conducted the Minnesota Orchestra's Composer Institute reading sessions in addition to serving on the panel of judges selecting composers.

Mr. Santora has collaborated with many of the world’s leading solo artists including Gil Shaham, James Galway, Jonathan Biss, Anne-Marie McDermott, Dawn Upshaw, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Ignat Solzhenitsyn, Leila Josefowitz, Elmar Oliveira, Benita Valente, Vladimir Feltsman, Gary Graffman, John Aler, Pamela Frank, Richard Stoltzman, David Jolley, Galina Gorchakova, Nikolai Putyilin, Håkan Hardenberger, and Miklós Perényi.

As recipient of the 1998 Aspen Conducting Prize, Mr. Santora was invited by David Zinman to serve as assistant conductor of the Aspen Music Festival for three consecutive seasons (1999 – 2002). He has participated in master classes with Daniel Barenboim, Kurt Masur, David Zinman, Neeme Järvi, and Otto-Werner Mueller.

Mr. Santora has been the recipient of the UBS Culture Award and the Presser Foundation Career Grant, as well as scholarships from the Migros, Kiefer-Hablitzel, and Kurt-Dienemann Foundations of Switzerland.

Born to Hungarian parents in the Netherlands, Mr. Santora moved with his family of musicians to Switzerland where he began to study violin with his father, a member of the Lucerne Symphony. After he received a diploma in violin and teaching from the Academy for School and Church Music in Lucerne, Mr. Santora continued his violin studies with Professor Thomas Brandis, former concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic, at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. Mr. Santora subsequently undertook conducting studies with Otto-Werner Mueller at the Curtis Institute of Music.

He currently lives with his family in Newton, Massachusetts.