Keri‑Lynn Wilson’s career as a conductor with many of the world’s leading opera houses and orchestras spans more than twenty years. Most recently, her commitment to defending Ukraine through music led to the creation of the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, an ensemble she helped to form, bringing together leading Ukrainian musicians from within the embattled country, recent refugees, and Ukrainian members of European orchestras.
This summer, under Ms. Wilson’s direction, the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra will assemble in Warsaw and embark on a European tour including the BBC Proms in London, the Edinburgh Festival, the Chorégies d’Orange in France, as well as performances in Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Dublin, and Amsterdam, before concluding with concerts at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park and the Kennedy Center.
Highlights of Ms. Wilson’s 2022/23 season included her Metropolitan Opera debut, conducting Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk; her return to the Royal Opera House to conduct La Traviata; and performances with Tokyo’s NHK Orchestra, the Hessische Staatsorchester Wiesbaden, the Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini, the Wrocław Philharmonic, the Orchestre national Bordeaux Aquitaine, the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, and the Lithuanian National Orchestra. She also made her debut at the Teatro Colón with Tosca and returned to her alma mater, Juilliard, for performances the following spring.
Over a rich and varied career, Ms. Wilson has conducted, among many others, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Wiener Kammerorchester, the Bruckner Orchestra Linz, the Russian National Orchestra, the Prague Philharmonia, the RAI Symphony Orchestra, the Salzburg Mozarteum, the Ravinia Festival Orchestra, the Seattle Symphony, the Orchestre national d’Île‑de‑France, the NDR Radiophilharmonie, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra.
Ms. Wilson’s operatic highlights include Carmen at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden; Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and La Traviata at the Wiener Staatsoper; La Traviata, Madama Butterfly, and Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Bayerische Staatsoper; Madama Butterfly at the Deutsche Oper Berlin; Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and La Traviata at the Opernhaus Zürich; Don Carlo, Iolanta, Manon Lescaut, Carmen, Tosca, and La Traviata at the Bolshoi Theatre; La fanciulla del West and Aida at the English National Opera; Rusalka at the Czech National Opera; Rigoletto at the Norwegian National Opera; Der fliegende Holländer, Carmina Burana, Boris Godunov, and Carmen at the Polish National Opera; Faust at the Washington National Opera; Pique Dame and Tosca at the Latvian National Opera; and Madama Butterfly at the Canadian Opera Company.
She was the first female conductor to lead an opera at the Arena di Verona (Tosca and Madama Butterfly), the New National Theatre Tokyo (Madama Butterfly), and the Opera di Roma (Aida).
Of partial Ukrainian descent, Ms. Wilson was raised in Winnipeg, Canada, home to North America’s largest Ukrainian community, where she studied flute, piano, and violin from an early age. While still a student at Juilliard, she assisted Claudio Abbado at the Salzburg Festival and received a fellowship from the Tanglewood Music Center. Upon graduating from Juilliard with master’s degrees in both flute and conducting, she was appointed Associate Conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.
