Anna Handler

The German Colombian conductor and pianist Anna Handler has been performing on stages and in concert halls around the world since her acclaimed debut at the Salzburg Festival in 2022. Beginning in fall 2025, she is Kapellmeister of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, where she leads 11 opera performances in the 2025-26 season. Since 2024 she has been an assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, appointed by BSO Music Director Andris Nelsons. She made her BSO debut at Tanglewood in August 2025 and makes her subscription series debut with the orchestra at Boston’s Symphony Hall in the 2025-26 season. In the 2024-25 season she led the Boston Symphony Chamber Players in Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring in Cambridge and at Tanglewood. A Dudamel Fellow at the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the 2023-24 season, she made her Walt Disney Concert Hall debut and was immediately re-engaged to lead the Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl in July 2025. She makes her subscription series debut with the orchestra at Walt Disney Concert Hall in March 2026. Handler was music director for Janáček’s Kát’a Kabanová for the renowned Opera Camp series at the Salzburg Festival in 2022 and returned to conduct Ravel’s opera L’Enfant et les sortilèges and Carl Orff’s Die Kluge. Further career highlights include appearances with the Minnesota Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, and Frankfurt Radio Symphony and working with soloists including Barbara Hannigan, Okka von der Damerau, Sabine Meyer, and Yo-Yo Ma. Handler conducted the incidental music from Mazeppa with the Berlin Philharmonic in Baden-Baden and was music director of the Bayerische Staatsoper’s production of Eva und Adam, which premiered at the 2019 Munich Opera Festival and featured young people from around Munich who came to Germany as refugees. Growing up in Munich, Handler studied piano and conducting at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich before continuing her studies at the Franz Liszt University of Music Weimar, the Accademia Pianistica Internazionale di Imola, and the Folkwang University of the Arts. She completed her master’s degree in conducting at the Juilliard School in New York in May 2023, becoming the first conductor ever to receive the prestigious Kovner Fellowship. As director of the Ensemble Enigma Classica, which she founded in 2019, Handler works with renowned soloists. She is particularly interested in technology-supported music mediation in real time. Conducting from the piano and chamber music collaborations with violinist Laura Handler are an important part of her musical identity. Handler received the Rising Star Award from the European Cultural Foundation Europamusicale and is a scholarship holder of the German Foundation for Musical Life. She was also awarded the Maria Ladenburger Prize for Music in cooperation with WDR, the Cusanuswerk Foundation, and Deutsche Grammophon.