Conductors’ Academy 2026/27

Hannah Howard Andresen is an orchestral conductor and speaker on the subject of gender and music. She is a part of Taki Alsop Conducting Fellow, under the mentorship of Marin Alsop, and a recipient of the Danish Arts Foundation’s Young Artist Elite Program. She has also been selected for elite conducting programmes, including the Nordic, Danish, and Norwegian Conductors’ Forums, and was featured in the NRK documentary «Let’s Play» with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra. She holds an MPhil in Gender Studies from the University of Oslo, where her award-winning thesis explored female conductors and diversity in classical music. She also earned a degree in orchestral conducting from the Norwegian Academy of Music and trained as a classical pianist.

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Winner of the Second Prize at the 2013 Queen Elisabeth Piano Competition, Rémi Geniet has built an international career marked by critically acclaimed recordings, including Bach and Beethoven releases. Driven by a deep interest in the orchestral and lyric worlds, he studies conducting in Germany, and was invited by Riccardo Muti to his Italian Opera Academy, both as a répétiteur and conductor. In 2025/2026, he debuts with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Marseille, the Orchestre de Chambre Nouvelle Europe and conducts Boulez’s «Le Marteau sans maître» at Salle Cortot, Paris. Rémi Geniet is the Artistic Director of the Sérénades en Baronnies Festival in Provence.

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Polina Lebedieva is the recipient of the Taki Alsop Conducting Fellowship 2026–2028. She currently serves as Assistant Conductor of Ensemble Intercontemporain, one of the world’s leading contemporary music ensembles. From September 2026, she will join Opéra de Paris as Conductor in Residence. In summer 2022, at the age of 21, Polina and the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine opened the Bachfest Leipzig, and took part in a BBC Digital recording project in collaboration with UNICEF. She has participated in several prestigious conducting academies, including the Gstaad Conducting Academy at the Gstaad Menuhin Festival (2025), and the Riccardo Muti Italian Opera Academy (2022).

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Rui Miguel Marques currently holds the position of Assistant Conductor of the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, since January 2025, where he works closely with their Chief Conductor, Andris Poga, and various guest conductors. During 2026, he has been collaborating with Portuguese pianist Bernardo Santos in an international tour featuring João Domingos Bomtempo’s Piano Concertos, celebrating the Portuguese composer’s 250th birthday in four countries, concluding with a recording project of his music in Portugal. The 21-year-old conductor is based in Oslo and studying at the Norwegian Academy of Music, under the guidance of Ole Kristian Ruud and Rolf Gupta. Before his degree, he studied for four years with British Conductor Timothy Henty and previously with Portuguese Conductors Alexandre Madeira and Marta Falcão.

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Aleksandra Melaniuk currently serves as a Salonen Conducting Fellow in the Negaunee Conducting Programme at the Colburn School. Recent highlights include her subscription concert debut with the Helsinki Philharmonic, with the San Francisco Symphony, and a last minute jump-in to conduct four performances of Verdi’s «La Traviata» at Opera Holland Park. In March 2025, she joined the Ziering-Conlon Initiative for Recovered Voices, a programme devoted to reviving music by composers silenced under the oppressive regimes of twentieth-century Europe, including Mieczysław Weinberg, whose work she later featured in a dedicated concert. Alongside her symphonic and operatic work, she has conducted at the Fiskars Summer Festival and Fiskars Easter Session, organised by the LEAD! Foundation under the mentorship of Jukka-Pekka Saraste.

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César Ramos is a Cuban conductor, working between the Netherlands and Spain. He is currently Conductor of Pulcinella Orchestra and Assistant Conductor of the Real Filharmonía de Galicia for the 2026–27 season, working alongside Swiss conductor Baldur Brönnimann. Alongside his professional activity, he maintains a strong commitment to youth orchestras and musical education. He served as Assistant Conductor of the Nationaal Jeugdorkest for its 2025 winter and summer tours, and of the Ulster Youth Orchestra for its 2024 summer course. He completed the Dutch National Master in Orchestral Conducting under Jac van Steen, Ed Spanjaard, and Antony Hermus, following earlier studies in cello and conducting in Havana.

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