After a long search with many highly-qualified candidates, lead by a dedicated search committee made up of BSO musicians, board members, and community members, the BSO is so very pleased to introduce you to our new Music Director, Ryo Hasegawa. We look forward to welcoming him into our community this summer, and all the music we will make together.
See below for Ryo’s bio, and a video of Ryo from BSO’s gala on April 20th.
About Ryo:
An up-and-coming young conductor and versatile arts advocate, Ryo Hasegawa is the Conductor of the Charleston Symphony Youth Orchestra, and Chair & Founder of Mudita Corporation, and will be the Music Director of the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra (Indiana) starting in the Summer of 2024. Under the mentorship of the world-renowned conductor, Marin Alsop, Hasegawa has performed at numerous concerts in the U.S., Europe, and Asia and launched several projects to promote interdisciplinary collaborations and advocate diversity in music and art education.
In 2023, Hasegawa was named the David Efron Conducting Fellow at Chautauqua Institution and led the Music School Festival Orchestra in the multiple concerts at the Chautauqua Amphitheater. Other recent highlights include international guest conducting debut with the Hamburg Symphony in Germany and the Tacet(i) Ensemble in Thailand. He is also an active guest assistant conductor for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Omaha Symphony, Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, Charleston Symphony Orchestra, Washington Choral Arts, American Composers Orchestra, and São Paulo Symphony Orchestra. Hasegawa worked both as a conductor and as an assistant with esteemed artists, such as Marin Alsop, Eric Jacobsen, Ken Lam, Joseph Young, Anna Clyne, Conrad Tao, and Westerlies.
Hasegawa made his American debut with the Charleston Symphony in 2019. He maintains a strong relationship with the symphony since then and is currently serving as the conductor of the Charleston Symphony Youth Orchestra, which will make a Carnegie Hall debut in 2024-205 season under Hasegawa’s baton. Past engagements include guest conducting members of the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra for their Focus series, guest conducting Molodechno Symphony (Belarus), PHASE ensemble (Austria), and Shamisen Ensemble Otoha (Japan).
Equally at home in both symphonic and operatic repertoire, Hasegawa conducted the full production of Hansel and Gretel at Annapolis Opera and Peabody Opera Theater in three cities, Baltimore, Annapolis, and Washington D.C. He was also an assistant conductor for the production of Puccini’s Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi at Chautauqua Opera Conservatory.
As an advocate of music from his native country Japan, Hasegawa performed several U.S. premieres of works by Japanese composers, including Near Away Home Town by Dan Fujikura and Japanese Suite for Strings by Akira Ifukube with the Peabody Orchestra. In 2021, he was invited to the Thailand New Music and Arts Symposium as a guest conductor and conducted the world-premiere of the Onokoro Concerto for Hichiriki by Masatora Goya. In the following year, he performed the world-premiere of the Gura Gura for the Shamisen Ensemble Otoha by Piyawat Louilarpprasert in Tokyo, Japan. Hasegawa is also the Artistic Director and Founder of the Inter-Asian Cultural Expo at Johns Hopkins University to unite the Asian community in Baltimore, MD through sharing music and art. The event received the Peabody Georgie Awards: Student Program of the Year 2022.
Hasegawa’s engagement with music education has had an impact on young music students across the world. He was a volunteer music instructor at Vanessa Grant Girls’ School in Rongai, Kenya and built the music program of the school with his colleagues. He also served as the assistant conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Youth Orchestra and the Peabody Youth Orchestra as well as a frequent guest lecturer at Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music in Bangkok, Thailand to explore the possibility of new roles as a conductor with the students. Moreover, he served as a piano and music theory faculty at Charleston Academy of Music, SC, where he realized the significance of equal accessibility to music in every child.
To promote accessibility and diversity with music and art in his home country of Japan, Hasegawa founded the nonprofit, Mudita, an art and music education advocacy organization. With a team of musicians and artists, Mudita hosts events and provides educational content to young people in Japan. He also launched the Mudita America Inc, in Orlando, FL, a multi-disciplined artists collective that focuses on collaborative performances in cross-genre and cross-culture to awaken new ways for young artists to participate in art and music. Under his innovative approach to increasing the art and music population in Japan and America, the organization is growing nationally and internationally.
Born and raised in Kanagawa, Japan, Ryo Hasegawa came back to music after he completed his career as a semi-amateur motorcycle racer. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Music from Rollins College, which granted him the 2022 Alumni Achievement Award. He holds his Master of Music in Orchestral Conducting Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University where he is currently pursuing his Doctor of Musical Arts in Orchestral Conducting. Additional conducting studies include the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Conducting Masterclass and National Symphony Orchestra with Marin Alsop, Peabody Conducting Studio Masterclass with Dalia Stasevska, Gemma New, Rune Bergmann, Kevin John Edusei, Jonathon Heyward, Kirill Karabits, Mei-Ann Chen, and Fabien Gable, International Conducting Workshop and Festival with Larry Rachleff and Donald Schleicher, and Conductors Retreat at Medomak with Kenneth Kiesler.