The 24-year-old Lithuanian conductor Izabelė Jankauskaitė received international recognition in 2022 when she won the prestigious Gstaad Conducting Academy "Neeme Järvi Prize". She is currently Assistant Conductor of the Tonhalle-Orchesters Zürich under Paavo Järvi.

As part of her assistantship in Zurich, she can be heard in family concerts with musicians of the orchestra, amongst others. In 2023 she will also make her debut with the Musikkollegium Winterthur, the Theater Orchester Biel Solothurn and the Berner Symphonieorchester. Further invitations will take her to the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, the Orquesta de Extremadura, the Filarmonica Banatul Timișoara and the NDR Radiophiharmonie. 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. During her studies, she conducted the Göttinger Symphonieorchester, the Südwestdeutsche Philharmonie Konstanz, the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hradec Králové Philharmonic Orchestra, the Collegium Musicum Basel, the Zentralschweizer Jugendsinfonieorchester and the Schweizer Jugend-Sinfonie-Orchester, amongst others.

In 2017 she won the 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 & 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.

SEASON 2022/2023