Biography

The 25-year-old Lithuanian conductor Izabelė Jankauskaitė first attracted international attention in 2022 when she won the Neeme Järvi Prize at the renowned Gstaad Conducting Academy. From August 2022 to June 2023 she was Assistant Conductor of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich under Paavo Järvi.

In the 2023/2024 season she will return to the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich for a family concert. In addition, she will make her debut with the hr-Sinfonieorchester, the Münchener Symphoniker, the Musikkollegium Winterthur and the Berner Symphonieorchester in the coming season. Further invitations will take her to the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, the Orquesta de Extremadura, the Filarmonica Banatul Timișoara and the Folkwang Kammerorchester Essen, among others. In autumn 2023 she will assist Nicholas Carter in a production of Puccini's opera "Tosca" at the Stadttheater Bern.

Izabelė Jankauskaitė has attended numerous master classes with conductors such as Jaap van Zweden, Kristjan Järvi, Baldur Brönnimann, Paavo Järvi, Leonid Grin and James Lowe. In June 2023 she assisted Michael Tilson Thomas with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich. During her studies she conducted the Göttingen Symphony Orchestra, the Südwestdeutsche Philharmonie Konstanz, the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hradec Králové Philharmonic Orchestra, the Collegium Musicum Basel, the Central Switzerland Youth Symphony Orchestra and the Swiss Youth Symphony Orchestra. She has worked with the Theater Orchester Biel Solothurn and the Württemberges Kammerorchester Heilbronn.

In 2017, she won first prize at the Jonas Aleksa Choir Conducting Competition. From 2019 to 2022 she was choir director of the Johannes Choir Mellingen and the Stadtsänger Winterthur.

Izabelė Jankauskaitė was born in Vilnius, Lithuania. She received her first music lessons at the National M. K. Čiurlionis School of Art. Later, she took up vocal studies at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. In 2018, she continued her musical education at the Zurich University of the Arts, initially in choral conducting. In 2020, she switched to orchestral conducting in the class of Prof. Johannes Schlaefli. She is currently studying in Zurich with Johannes Schlaefli and Christoph-Mathias Mueller.

SEASON 2023/2024