YAKOV KREIZBERG has established an international reputation both in the opera house and on the concert podium. He holds the posts of Chief Conductor and Artistic Advisor of the Netherlands Philharmonic and the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

At the end of the 2000/01 season Kreizberg relinquished the post of General Musikdirector of the Komische Oper Berlin, having established a fine reputation in a wide variety of repertoire from Verdi to Henze. From 1985 to 1988 he was Music Director of the Mannes College Orchestra in New York, and from 1988 to 1994 he served as General Music Director of the Krefeld/ Mönchengladbach Opera House and the Niederrheinischer Sinfoniker.

His career has taken on international breadth with a wide range of engagements as a guest conductor with the major orchestras of Europe and North America. In Autumn 2004 Kreizberg will conduct the Vienna Symphony Orchestra on their first tour of Japan together. Last season he took over the Philadelphia Orchestra's highly esteemed tour of the Americas and appeared as guest conductor with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, and the symphony orchestras of Chicago, San Francisco, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Detroit, Atlanta, Houston, St. Louis, Boston, Toronto, and Montreal.

In addition to his performances at the Komische Oper, Kreizberg has conducted for Canadian Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and English National Opera. His debut at Glyndebourne Festival Opera conducting Jenu?fa received great critical acclaim and led to subsequent appearances at the 1995 and 1998 Glyndebourne Festivals. Upcoming opera engagements include Iolanthe with Netherlands Opera, Weill's Der Protagonist and Royal Palace with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, and Macbeth at the Royal Opera House in 2006.

Born in St. Petersburg, Kreizberg started taking piano lessons at the age of five. Later he studied conducting with Ilya A. Musin of the St. Petersburg Conservatory before immigrating to the United States in 1976. Here he was awarded conducting fellowships at Tanglewood and at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute, where he was invited back as assistant to Michael Tilson Thomas. Kreizberg won first prize in the 1986 Leopold Stokowski Conducting Competition in New York.