Lidiya Yankovskaya is a fiercely committed advocate for Slavic masterpieces and contemporary works on the leading edge of classical music. She has conducted more than 40 world premieres, including 17 operas, and her strength as a visionary collaborator has guided new perspectives on staged and symphonic repertoire from Carmen and Queen of Spades to Price and Prokofiev. Her transformative tenure as Music Director of Chicago Opera Theater earned consistent recognition from the Chicago Tribune, which named her Chicagoan of the Year and credited her with “raising the profile of COT immensely, her interpretations bracing and repertoire head-spinningly varied.”

The 24/25 season opened with Yankovskaya’s successful Australian debut leading Puccini’s rarely performed Il trittico at Opera Australia, which resulted in an immediate re-engagement for a new production of Carmen in 2025. Elsewhere, Yankovskaya conducts La bohème with San Diego Opera and returns to Washington National Opera to lead The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs. She also appears with orchestras across the United States, conducting concerts in Nashville, Miami, Grand Rapids, Rochester, Albany, and Los Angeles. She returns to the United Kingdom, where The Guardian praised her reading of Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs as “visceral…refreshingly unsentimental,” to debut with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and join her longtime collaborator, sarod grand master Amjad Ali Khan, at the London Philharmonic. This summer, she returns to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for a concert with violinist Ray Chen at the Ravinia Festival.

Yankovskaya has recently conducted Eugene Onegin at Staatsoper Hamburg, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs and Bluebeard’s Castle at English National Opera, Rusalka at Santa Fe Opera, Carmen at Houston Grand Opera, Taking Up Serpents at Washington National Opera, and Don Giovanni at Seattle Opera. On the concert stage, high-profile engagements include appearances with the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics; concerts with Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, and National Symphony Orchestras; and Julia Wolfe’s Anthracite Fields at Carnegie Hall.

In her seven seasons as Music Director of Chicago Opera Theater, Yankovskaya spearheaded the commissioning of 11 new operas, advancing the work of six female composers and seven creators of color. She led the Chicago premieres of Heggie’s Moby-Dick and Talbot’s Everest, as well as Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta and Szymanowski’s King Roger, before concluding her tenure with a landmark new Francesca Zambello production of Shostakovich’s The Nose. Under her leadership, COT established the Vanguard Initiative, an immersive two-year residency for emerging opera composers that culminates with the development of a full-length opera. She continues this vital work as Artistic Director of the Vanguard Initiative, enriching the repertory with new voices and experiences that resonate with today’s audiences.

This adroit combination of musical skill and cultural advocacy is a hallmark of Yankovskaya’s career. She was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and grew up immersed in music as a pianist, violinist, and singer. When she immigrated to the United States as a refugee at age nine, her devotion to music remained a constant in her life. Those experiences inspired her to found the Refugee Orchestra Project, which proclaims the societal relevance of refugees through music. ROP has brought that message to hundreds of thousands of listeners around the world, with performances in London, Boston, Washington, D.C., and the United Nations. This important work has been featured on CNN, The Today Show, NowThis, Newsweek, and BBC World Newsday, bringing classical music and artists’ compelling stories to audiences well beyond the concert hall and opera house.

In the first decade of her career, Yankovskaya led several innovative instrumental and operatic organizations, including the Boston New Music Festival, which she founded, and Juventas New Music Ensemble, which was the recipient of multiple NEA grants and National Opera Association Awards under her leadership as Artistic Director. As Music Director of Harvard’s Lowell House Opera, she conducted five seasons of large-scale repertoire including the U.S. Russian-language premiere of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Snegurochka. During this time, she also served as Boston Symphony Orchestra’s chorus master, with conductors including Andris Nelsons and Bernard Haitink, and worked regularly as a pianist and repetiteur.

Yankovskaya is committed to expanding the impact of classical music and developing the next generation of artistic leaders. In addition to her work with the Vanguard Initiative, she serves as a mentor to emerging conductors with the Taki Alsop Fellowship and volunteers with Turn The Spotlight, an organization dedicated to identifying, nurturing, and empowering leaders among equity-seeking groups in the arts. She was delighted to deliver the 2023 commencement address for graduates of the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University.

Yankovskaya holds a B.A. in Music and Philosophy from Vassar College, with a focus on piano, voice, and conducting, and earned an M.M. in Conducting from Boston University. Her conducting teachers and mentors have included Marin Alsop, Kenneth Kiesler, and Ann Howard Jones; she has also held assistantships with Lorin Maazel and Vladimir Jurowski. Yankovskaya is the proud two-time recipient of Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Awards. She has been a featured speaker at the League of American Orchestras and Opera America conferences and served as U.S. Representative to the World Opera Forum in Madrid.

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