Orchestra of St. Luke’s & Stella Chen, violin

American violinist Stella Chen garnered worldwide attention with her first-prize win at the 2019 Queen Elizabeth International Violin Competition, followed by the 2020 Avery Fisher Career Grant and 2020 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award.

Since then, Chen has appeared across North America, Europe, and Asia in concerto, recital, and chamber music performances. She recently made debuts with the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Baltimore Symphony, Belgian National Orchestra, and many others and appeared in concertos at the Vienna Musikverein, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Berlin Philharmonie. In recital, recent appearances include Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Phillips Collection, Rockport Music Festival, and Nume Festival in Italy. She appears frequently with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center both in New York and on tour.

For her all-Schubert debut album, released in March of 2023 to critical acclaim on the Apple Music label Platoon, Chen was named the 2023 Young Artist of the Year at the Gramophone Awards.

Among the highlights of her busy 2024-25 season are debuts with orchestras such as the San Francisco, New World, and Toronto Symphonies, recitals throughout North America, Europe and Asia, and a major tour in China, where she opened the Shanghai Philharmonic’s season with the Barber Concerto.

Chen has appeared as a chamber musician in festivals including the Kronberg Academy, Moritzburg, Ravinia, Seattle Chamber Music, Perlman Music Program, Music@Menlo, Bridgehampton, Rockport, and Sarasota. She returns to the Sarasota Music Festival as faculty in 2025.

She is the inaugural recipient of the Robert Levin Award from Harvard University, where she was inspired by Robert Levin himself. Teachers and mentors have included Donald Weilerstein, Itzhak Perlman, Miriam Fried, Li Lin, and Catherine Cho. She received her doctorate from the Juilliard School where she serves as a teaching assistant. She is also a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Shenandoah Conservatory and faculty at the annual Nume Festival and Academy in Cortona, Italy.

Stella plays the General Kyd 1720 Stradivarius, on generous loan from Dr. Ryuji Ueno and Rare Violins In Consortium, Artists and Benefactors Collaborative.

Anna Rakitina has firmly established herself as one of the most exciting and sought-after conductors of her generation following a series of highly acclaimed appearances with Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras as well as the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Tonkünstler-Orchester, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, and Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra.

The 2024-25 season sees Rakitina make debuts with City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Sønderjyllands Symfoniorkester, Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, and North Carolina Symphony. In May 2025, she will conduct at the first-ever Shostakovich Festival Leipzig, which will bring together the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, and young musicians from both the Tanglewood Music Center and the Mendelssohn Orchestra Academy. Throughout the season, she will will also appear with Malmö Symphony Orchestra, Dresdner Philharmonie, Staatskapelle Dresden, Stuttgarter Philharmoniker, Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música, and Orquestra Sinfónica de Galicia.

In recent seasons, Anna Rakitina has worked with orchestras such as BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Nürnberger Symphoniker, NDR Radiophilharmonie, Orchestre philharmonique du Luxembourg, Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Orchestre National de Lille, and Norwegian National Opera Orchestra. In North America, she has appeared with notable orchestras such as the Baltimore, Cincinnati, Houston, Utah, Quebec, and Vancouver Symphony Orchestras.
Anna Rakitina regularly collaborates with soloists including Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Inon Barnatan, Joshua Bell, Renaud Capuçon, Augustin Hadelich, Lucas and Arthur Jussen, Daniel Hope, Gil Shaham, Christian Tetzlaff, Jan Vogler, and Alisa Weilerstein. She continues to champion music by today’s composers including Anna Clyne, Elena Langer, and Ellen Reid.

Rakitina was Assistant Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 2019 to 2023, where she was only the second woman in the orchestra’s history to hold the position. She concluded her tenure with a highly acclaimed performance at the Tanglewood Music Festival with Joshua Bell in August 2023. Previously, she was a Dudamel Fellow at the Los Angeles Philharmonic (2019/20 season). Rakitina’s talents have been recognised through multiple awards, including second prize at the Malko Competition 2018, and further prizes at the Deutscher Dirigentenpreis’ 2017 and the TCO International Conducting Competition Taipei 2015.

Born in Moscow to a Ukrainian father and a Russian mother, Rakitina grew up in a musical family and began her education as a violinist before studying conducting at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory with Stanislav Dyachenko and later in Hamburg with Prof. Ulrich Windfuhr. She wasfinalist of ‘Das kritische Orchester’ in Berlin in 2018, participated in the Lucerne Festival Academy’s conducting fellowship scheme led by Alan Gilbert and Bernard Haitink. She has attended masterclasses with Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Vladimir Jurowski, Johannes Schlaefli, and the 2022 Ammodo Masterclass conducting the Concertgebouworkest led by Fabio Luisi.

To learn more about Anna Rakitina, please visit her website.

Orchestra of St. Luke’s (OSL) performs and produces in a variety of formats throughout New York City, including orchestral and chamber music series on each of Carnegie Hall’s iconic stages, programs focused on contemporary composers presented throughout the five boroughs, collaborations with Paul Taylor Dance Company at Lincoln Center, a composition institute, and much more. Many of OSL’s performances are presented for free through its education and community engagement programs, reaching over 12,000 students and families annually with accessible, interactive student concerts, a thriving youth orchestra, and mentorship programs for emerging players. OSL built and operates The DiMenna Center in midtown Manhattan — the city’s only rehearsal, recording, and performance space built specially for classical music — where it hosts thousands of musicians and audience members year-round.

For more information and where they are playing next, please visit their website.