Erina Yashima

German-born conductor Erina Yashima is the Assistant Conductor of The Philadelphia Orchestra since September 2019. In this role, she assists Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin as well as guest conductors, and leads The Philadelphia Orchestra in a variety of concert programs.

Recent and forthcoming highlights as guest conductor, include her return to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, her debuts with the San Francisco Symphony, the Albany Symphony, the Colorado Music Festival, and with the Rostov State Philharmonic, new opera productions of Mozart’s Così fan tutte with the Washington National Opera at the Kennedy Center, and Don Giovanni at the Teatro di Pisa in Italy as well as her returns to the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, the Transylvania State Philharmonic of Cluj-Napoca, and the Brandenburg State Orchestra Frankfurt (Oder).

Yashima had numerous engagements planned for the 2020/21 season that had to be cancelled or postponed due to COVID-19, including new opera productions at the Glimmerglass Festival and the Teatro Filarmonico di Verona, her debuts with the Eugene Symphony, her French debut with the Orchestre national d’Île-de-France as well as revivals of her Don Giovanni production in Livorno and Lucca, and an engagement as cover conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Since 2015, Yashima has been studying with Riccardo Muti. As winner of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Sir Georg Solti Conducting Apprenticeship, Yashima assisted Maestro Muti and and worked closely with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago. She also has also collaborated with cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and assisted such guest conductors as Esa-Pekka Salonen, Christoph Eschenbach, and Edward Gardner.

Equally committed as opera conductor, Yashima made her debut at the Salzburg Festival with Der Schauspieldirektor for children and conducted Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro and Rossini’s La Cenerentola with the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra in Italy. She also served as répétiteur with conducting duties at the Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern in 2015.

As finalist of the 2018 Nestlé and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award Yashima performed with the Camerata Salzburg. She was assistant conductor to Zubin Mehta and the Bavarian Radio Orchestra during their Asia Tour 2018, and an active participant of masterclasses with Riccardo Muti and Bernard Haitink.

Yashima was a pre-college piano student of Bernd Goetzke at the Institute for the Early Advancement of the Musically Highly Gifted in Hannover. After studying conducting in Freiburg with Scott Sandmeier and in Vienna with Mark Stringer, she completed her studies at the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin with Christian Ehwald and Hans-Dieter Baum.