Karina Canellakis “fell in love with the [violin] as a 3-year-old when she saw Itzhak Perlman playing on an episode of Sesame Street. By 12, she picked up a conductor’s baton,” writes Bill Glauber in Thursday’s (11/9) Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “Now 36 and a rising star of the classical music world, Canellakis is in town to conduct the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra during performances Friday through Sunday…. Her career as a violinist included playing regularly with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra…. In 2014, in her fifth week as an assistant conductor with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, she was called in at the last minute to conduct Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 8 [when] music director Jaap van Zweden had a shoulder injury… ‘You could feel they were really with me, we’re going to make this happen,’ she said, describing the immediate bond she felt with the orchestra. Canellakis is now in the second year as a globetrotting guest conductor, appearing on stages from Los Angeles to London to Hong Kong…. For Canellakis, it really is all about the music. She says a symphony orchestra is ‘the heart of a city’ able to bring people together.”
Posted November 10, 2017
