Biography

Mischa Santora joined Boston Ballet as Music Director in 2018. Prior to that as the artistic director of the Spotlight Series at MacPhail Center for Music and the Minneapolis Music Company, Santora curated innovative and interdisciplinary performances around the Twin Cities. A champion of new music, he recently premiered works by Sally Beamish, Timo Andres, and Steve Heitzeg with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Minnesota Orchestra. Previous positions include Music Director of the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, Hungarian International Opera Festival, New York Youth Symphony, and Associate Conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra.

In North America, Santora has appeared with the Philadelphia, Minnesota, and Louisville Orchestras; the Los Angeles Philharmonic; the Houston, National, New Jersey, Kansas City, Phoenix, Indianapolis, North Carolina, Hartford, Princeton, and Hamilton (Ontario) Symphonies; as well as the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia.

In Europe and the Middle East, he has led the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, the Basel and Lucerne Symphony Orchestras, the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra, the Budapest Matáv Symphony, the Miskolc Symphony, the Hungarian National Symphony Orchestra's Chorus, the Georgisches Kammerorchester Ingolstadt, and the Israel Chamber Orchestra.

Born to Hungarian parents in the Netherlands, Santora moved to Switzerland at the age of three where he began to study violin with his father, a former member of the Lucerne Symphony. After he received a diploma in violin and teaching from the Academy for School and Church Music in Lucerne, Santora continued his violin studies with Professor Thomas Brandis, former concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic, at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. Santora subsequently undertook conducting studies with Otto-Werner Mueller at the Curtis Institute of Music.

Photo credit: Leslie Plesser