20 For 20: Artists To Watch

WQXR

New York, NY

It’s hard to keep track of the force of nature that is Russian-American conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya. As music director of Chicago Opera Theater (yes, this makes her the only woman — at least, until Eun Sun Kim takes over at San Francisco in 2021— to hold that title at a multimillion-dollar opera company in the U.S.), she’ll be conducting the world premiere of Dan Shore’s Freedom Ride, and has already started on a trio of Chicago premieres: Joby Talbot’s Everest and Rachmaninoff’s Aleko, and David T. Little’s Soldier Songs. The streak continues to the north, with the world premiere of Paola Prestini’s Edward Tulane at Minnesota Opera. Yankovskaya is headed to New York, too, where she conducts Ellen West, a new tour-de-force chamber opera by Ricky Ian Gordon at the Prototype Festival, having already led a successful world premiere at Saratoga. Yankovskaya is also the visionary co-founder and artistic director of The Refugee Orchestra Project. Having arrived in the U.S. as a refugee from Russia when she was 9, the bilingual badass remains devoted to social justice and is a warrior when it comes to helping change the game for both women and people of color in the classical industry. And of course, music is life — she was even featured in a recent kids’ book designed to inspire our next generation of activists.