Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets™ in Concert

Keitaro Harada consistently provides riveting concerts and opera performances in Asia, the Americas, and Europe. As music director of the Savannah Philharmonic since the 2020–21 Season, Keitaro has transformed the orchestra and energized its audiences with his imaginative programs and charismatic presence. In 2024, he became permanent conductor of the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra. He has forged a close connection with the NHK Symphony Orchestra with whom he appears frequently and has recorded three albums. Also in 2024, he became principal guest conductor and artistic partner for the Aichi Chamber Orchestra. He is a recipient of the 2023 Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award.

In the 2024–25 Season, Keitaro will make his debut with Adelaide Symphony and his subscription debut with Cincinnati Symphony. Recent and upcoming highlights include engagements with major orchestras across the glove.

Well versed in the operatic canon, Keitaro was a Seiji Ozawa Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center in 2010, where he delivered a critically acclaimed performance of Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. He has since led performances of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, Bizet’s Carmen, and Britten’s Turn of the Screw at North Carolina Opera. He has led performances of Mazzoli’s Song from the Uproar, Carmen, Don Pasquale, La fille du régiment, and Tosca.

In the 2022–23 Season, he debuted at Nikikai Opera in Tokyo, leading performances of Orphée aux enfers. He returned to Cincinnati Opera to conduct a critically acclaimed Madama Butterfly as part of an all-Japanese creative team.

Keitaro was associate conductor for four years at the Cincinnati Symphony and Pops, where he regularly assisted music director Louis Langrée. He is a six-time recipient of The Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Award; and in 2013, he was invited to the Bruno Walter National Conductor Preview. Keitaro has released eight albums with various orchestras. He studied with Lorin Maazel at Castleton Festival and Fabio Luisi at the Pacific Music Festival, where, at Valery Gergiev’s invitation, he served on the festival’s faculty in 2016, 2018, and 2021.

The Houston Symphony Chorus is one of Houston’s oldest and most distinguished musical organizations.

Over the years, the Chorus has sung with dozens of the world’s most notable conductors, including Andrés Orozco-Estrada, Steven Reineke, Michael Krajewski, Robert Shaw, André Previn, Leopold Stokowski, Christoph Eschenbach, Sir John Barbirolli, Ferenc Fricsay, Lawrence Foster, and Hans Graf, to name only a very few.

In addition to performances in Jones Hall, the Symphony’s home venue, the Chorus has also delighted audiences in various concert halls throughout the United States, Europe, and Mexico.

Recent reactions to its performances include:

Classical/Chorus: “…beautifully balanced, modulated sound that seamlessly blended with the orchestra.”
—Review of A German Requiem, Houston Chronicle, May 8, 2018

Classical/Chorus: “… the chorus was magnificent.”
—Review of Stabat Mater, Houston Chronicle, September 27, 2018

The Chorus consists entirely of volunteer singers who have considerable musical skill, vocal talent, and choral experience. They audition for placement each year.  The Chorus performance schedule is possibly the busiest in the country, consisting of up to fourteen different sets of repertoire for a total of 45 concerts.