Kazuki Yamada is the Music Director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO). Alongside his commitments in Birmingham, he is also Artistic and Music Director of Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte-Carlo (OPMC) and will become Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (DSO) from the 2026/2027 season.
"The orchestra play with a unity and a precision under his baton that I have seldom heard with anyone else"
Bachtrack
Time spent under the close supervision of Seiji Ozawa served to underline the importance of what Kazuki Yamada calls his “Japanese feeling” for classical music. Born in 1979 in Kanagawa, Japan, he continues to work and perform in Japan every season with NHK Symphony Orchestra. Shortly after assuming his position in Birmingham, Yamada gave a series of concerts on tour around Japan with the CBSO in summer 2023 and took OPMC on tour to Japan in 2024.
His time under the close supervision of Seiji Ozawa served to underline the importance of what Kazuki Yamada calls his “Japanese feeling” for classical music. Born in 1979 in Kanagawa, Japan, he continues to work and performs in Japan every season with the most renowned orchestras such as NHK Symphony Orchestra and Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, among others. During his tenure as Music Director, Yamada has regularly taken both the CBSO and OPMC for a series of concerts on tour around Japan, most recently with the former in summer 2025.
Yamada’s passionate and collaborative approach to conducting means he commands a busy international diary of concerts, opera, and choral conducting. The current season begins with his return to the BBC Proms in summer 2025 with the CBSO, with whom he embarks on another European Tour in March 2026, closely followed by his return to Tanglewood Festival with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 2026 Yamada also conducts the Monte Carlo Opera in a production of Debussy ‘Pelléas et Mélisande’.
Strongly committed to his role as an educator, Yamada appears annually as a guest artist at the Seiji Ozawa International Academy Switzerland and is strongly committed to the CBSO’s outreach programme. The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on international concert halls reaffirmed his belief that – in his words – “The audience is always involved in making the music. As a conductor, I need an audience there as much as the musicians “.
Yamada studied music at Tokyo University of the Arts, where he discovered a love for both Mozart and the Russian romantic repertory. He first achieved international attention upon receiving first prize in the 51st International Besançon Competition for Young Conductors in 2009. Having lived in Japan for most of his life, Kazuki Yamada now resides in Berlin.
