“Rouvali draws exquisite colouring, and the quieter moments - the ghostly dying fall at the end of the movement, the minor-key contrast of the old-world minuet with its wraith-like flute stand out first among many - all have the right magic.” BBC Music Magazine, October 2023  

The 2025/26 season continues Santtu-Matias Rouvali’s tenures as Principal Conductor of Philharmonia Orchestra and Honorary Conductor of Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, close to his home in Finland.  

Deepening his strong relationship with New York Philharmonic, summer 2025 marked Rouvali’s second appearance at Bravo! Vail Festival with the orchestra and soloists Miah Persson and Yulianna Avdeeva-Neudauer. The summer also saw Rouvali conduct Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hall, and Philharmonia Orchestra in their continued residency in Mikkeli, Finland, as well as performances in Hamburg, Bucharest, Rimini and Merano.  

Throughout the current and previous seasons, he continues his relationships with top-level orchestras and soloists across Europe, including Münchner Philharmoniker, Berliner Philharmoniker, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. He also returns to North America for concerts with New York Philharmonic and The Cleveland Orchestra. This season, he appears with The Philadelphia Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic and Vienna Symphony Orchestras.  

Rouvali works with many international soloists including Bruce Liu, Lisa Batiashvili, Seong-Jin Cho, Nicola Benedetti, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Nemanja Radulović, Stephen Hough, Augustin Hadelich, Nikolai Lugansky, Christian Tetzlaff, Gil Shaham, Baiba Skride and Ava Bahari. 

Continuing their strong touring tradition, Rouvali and Philharmonia Orchestra tour the United States in October 2025 and are joined by Clara-Yumi Kang for a tour of Korea in December 2025. In January 2026, they embark on an extensive tour of Europe with concerts in cities including Brussels, Frankfurt, Munich and Vienna. 

2024/25 served as Rouvali’s final season as Chief Conductor of Gothenburg Symphony, following a successful eight-year tenure. It was marked by a tour to Germany and Czechia, followed by a celebration concert in Gothenburg. He completed his Sibelius Cycle recording with Alpha Classics, the previous releases of which have been highly acclaimed with awards including Gramophone Editor’s Choice award, Les Chocs de Classica, a prize from the German Record Critics, the prestigious French Diapason d’Or ‘Découverte’, and Radio Classique’s ‘TROPHÉE’.    

Philharmonia Records’ first release, a double CD album Santtu conducts Strauss, was released in March 2023 following recent releases of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake and Prokofiev’s Symphony No.5. Mahler 2, the second album from Philharmonia Records, was released in September 2023. Santtu conducts Stravinsky, released in March 2024, was the third album from Philharmonia Records featuring The Firebird Suite and Petrushka. Another prominent CD - Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with Benjamin Grosvenor, Nicola Benedetti and Sheku Kanneh-Mason - was released on Decca in May 2024. 

Conrad Tao is a pianist and composer celebrated for his boundary-defying artistry as well as his powerful performances of traditional repertoire. Described by New York Magazine as “the kind of musician who is shaping the future of classical music,” and praised by The New York Times for his “probing intellect and open-hearted vision,” Tao appears regularly as a soloist with leading orchestras and at major venues across the world. 
 

In the 2025–26 season, Tao returns to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as both soloist and recitalist, performing Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with Karina Canellakis and later presenting a recital program featuring Gershwin song arrangements alongside works by Schoenberg, Strayhorn, Schumann, and others. Recital highlights include debuts at Berlin’s Philharmonie and Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, as well as returns to Klavierfestival Ruhr, and to the Celebrity Series of Boston, and the Seattle Symphony with Poetry and Fairy Tales, a program blending works by David Fulmer, Rebecca Saunders, Todd Moellenberg, Brahms, and Ravel. 

Tao reunites with Robert Spano for performances of John Adams’ Century Rolls (San Diego Symphony) and Bernstein’s The Age of Anxiety (Atlanta Symphony). He also joins Matthias Pintscher and the Konzerthausorchester Berlin for Pintscher’s NUR, and travels to Tokyo to perform Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 17 with the NHK Symphony and Jaap van Zweden. He makes his harpsichord debut at Princeton University in Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s Dies Irae. 

Recent highlights include his return to Carnegie Hall with Debussy’s 12 Études and his original composition Keyed In, as well as appearances with the San Francisco Symphony and Nicholas Collon, Philadelphia Orchestra and Marin Alsop, Boston Symphony and Dima Slobodeniouk, New York Philharmonic and Jaap van Zweden, and Cleveland Orchestra and Jahja Ling. In 2024, he also toured Europe with the Kansas City Symphony and Matthias Pintscher to mark the 100th anniversary of Rhapsody in Blue, with sold-out performances at the Elbphilharmonie, Berlin Philharmonie, and Concertgebouw. 

Tao continues performing his own works, including Flung Out, an homage to Gershwin, which he played recently at the Aspen Festival, and The Hand, a companion to Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1, which was commissioned and performed by the Kansas City Symphony. His orchestral work Everything Must Go premiered with the New York Philharmonic and later in Europe with the Antwerp Symphony. He also tours Counterpoint, his collaboration with dancer Caleb Teicher, and performs regularly with the Junction Trio alongside Stefan Jackiw and Jay Campbell. Additional recent collaborators include vocalist Charmaine Lee, artist Avram Finkelstein, choreographer Miguel Gutierrez, and brass quartet The Westerlies.  

Tao’s acclaimed recordings include Voyages, Pictures, and American Rage (all on Warner), as well as the loser by David Lang, and Bricolage with The Westerlies.  

He is a recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Gilmore Young Artist Award, and a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award for his collaboration with Caleb Teicher on More Forever.