Anna Handler

The German-Colombian conductor and pianist Anna Handler grew up in Munich. In the 2023/24 season she was a Dudamel Fellow with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. In September 2024 she will take up the position of assistant conductor with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, a position to which she was appointed by Andris Nelsons.

Following her debut at the 2022 Salzburg Festival as the musical director for the Kát’a Kabanová Opera Camp, she returned in 2023 for L’Enfant et les sortilèges and this summer conducts Orff’s Die Kluge. Other highlights of the 2023/24 season have included her debuts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic, the Graz Philharmonic and the Munich Radio Orchestra.

As an assistant, Anna Handler has worked with renowned conductors and leading orchestras and ensembles. She has assisted Kirill Petrenko at the Berlin Philharmonic and worked as an assistant to Daniel Harding with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, to Barbara Hannigan with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, and to Manfred Honeck and Simone Young. She assisted Oksana Lyniv with opera productions at the Bavarian State Opera, and took over the musical direction of the production Eva and Adam, which received its premiere as part of the 2019 Munich Opera Festival.
As the founder and artistic director of the Enigma Classica ensemble, she has performed with outstanding soloists such as Arabella Steinbacher, Daniel Müller-Schott and Sabine Meyer. Together with Enigma Classica she presented an interdisciplinary project on music education at the Festival junger Künstler Bayreuth in 2022. Two other important aspects of her work are conducting from the keyboard and her chamber-music collaboration with the violinist Laura Handler.

Anna Handler studied piano and conducting at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich and the University of Music Franz Liszt in Weimar, and received further training at the Accademia Pianistica Internazionale di Imola and at the Folkwang University of the Arts. In May 2023 she graduated from her Master’s degree at the Juilliard School in New York, where she was mentored by David Robertson, and became the first conductor to receive the Juilliard Kovner Fellowship. She has also received support from the Cusanuswerk Foundation and the Deutsche Stiftung Musikleben, and was awarded the Maria-Ladenburger-Förderpreis for music and the Rising Star Award from the European Cultural Foundation EUROPAMUSICALE.