Japanese-American conductor Ken Yanagisawa is the Music Director of the Boston Opera Collaborative and the newly formed Boston Annex Players, the Associate Conductor of the Boston Civic Symphony, the Assistant Conductor of the New Philharmonia Orchestra, and an Assistant Professor at Berklee College of Music.
A 2024 Aspen Conducting Academy Fellow and James Conlon Prize recipient, Ken was also awarded the 2025 Aspen Conducting Prize, which carries with it an appointment as Assistant Conductor of the Aspen Music Festival and School in 2026. Upcoming engagements include a return to Japan to conduct Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito for Kansai Nikikai’s landmark 100th opera production. He previously made his Japanese debut conducting Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte with Kansai Nikikai and the Japan Century Symphony Orchestra at the Hyogo Performing Arts Center. Ken has also served as a Conducting Apprentice with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and has assisted/covered the National Symphony Orchestra, Rhode Island and Plymouth Philharmonics, Berlin Academy of American Music, and Berlin Opernfest, among others.
Ken recently completed a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Orchestral Conducting at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts under the guidance of James Burton and also holds graduate degrees in conducting from the Manhattan School of Music and a B.A. in music from Yale University. Prior to Yale he attended the New England Conservatory as an Undergraduate Diploma candidate for Oboe Performance under the tutelage of John Ferrillo. His other teachers include George Manahan, William Lumpkin, Bernard Labadie, and Tatsuya Shimono. In masterclasses and festivals, he has been taught by renowned artists and pedagogues such as Robert Spano, Leonard Slatkin, Mark Stringer, Dame Jane Glover, Hugh Wolff, Gerard Schwarz, and Jorma Panula. He is deeply grateful for all the excellent guidance and mentorship he has received thus far in his life as a musician.
Beyond the podium, Ken has held positions as orchestra librarian for Boston University’s College of Fine Arts and as an artistic administrator for the New York Philharmonic. He is also an accomplished freelance photographer, with work published in TIME, The New York Times, Huffington Post, Boston Globe, Playbill, and the Yale Daily News.