LEAD Foundation

Today is a big day especially for our young conductors! This evening they will lead Fiskars Festival Orchestra in our Open House Concert with a programme of Mozart, Sibelius, Britten and Beethoven. They will share the stage with our fabulous soloists Otto Antikainen and Karen Cargill!

We've had an amazing first days of the Fiskars Summer Festival! Here are a few photos from

Remember that our Open House Concert is on Sat 1.8. at 19:00! Our young conductors will lead the Fiskars Festival Orchestra for a programme of Mozart, Sibelius, Britten and Beethoven, and they will be joined by our fabulous soloists Otto Antikainen and Karen Cargill.

📷 Paul Hughes

The first session of this year's Conductor's Masterclass took place earlier today! We were happy to follow our young conductors collaborating with the soloist Otto Antikainen and the Fiskars Festival Orchestra, and learning from our mentors Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Vasily Petrenko.

📸 Paul Hughes & Yu-Te Wu

The first rehearsal for the string is in the bag! We were happy to have our young conductors and maestro Vasily Petrenko conduct the first rehearsal.

The last two conducting students of Fiskars Summer Festival 2026 are conductors Jess Hoskins and Korbinian Krol!

🌟 Jess Hoskins
Jess Hoskins is rapidly building a varied career with a strong emphasis on contemporary music, opera and innovative cross-genre projects. They have recently been announced as the new Musical Director of New London Chamber Choir, with next season including projects at LSO St Luke's and the Royal Academy of Music. Jess’ experience as an assistant conductor includes projects with the London Symphony Orchestra, Opéra de Rouen, Garsington Opera, and National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, Opera, and they will be assisting at Glyndebourne this autumn. Their concert highlights include the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra's Young Conductor's Showcase, and performances with Waterperry Opera and Wells Cathedral School Symphony Orchestra. Jess’ music directing experience in the theatre includes Philip Venables’ Denis and Katya, Maxwell Davies’ Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot and two premieres at Tête-à-Tête opera, and they have premiered concert works by dozens of composers.

Jess graduated with distinction from the master’s course in orchestral conducting at the Royal Academy of Music, where they studied with Sian Edwards, winning the exam board prize for conducting and the Commendation for Excellence, the Academy's highest graduation honour. Jess has taken part in masterclasses with Jac van Steen, Ed Gardner, and Mark Stringer, and also studied at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki with Antony Hermus as part of the Elton John Global Exchange programme. Jess is also a DJ and the founder of The Orchestral Dance Music Experiment, a new project combining electronic dance music with live instrumentals.

🌟 Korbinian Krol
Stylistic diversity and a passion for a wide-ranging musical repertoire are the hallmarks of the young conductor Korbinian Krol. He is a recipient of the Danish Conductors' Association's Talent Award and was accepted into the Danish elite development programme Dirigentløftet in 2025, as well as into the German Music Council's Forum Dirigieren in 2026.

As part of his studies at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, he regularly conducts concerts with professional orchestras throughout Scandinavia, most recently with the Copenhagen Philharmonic, the Danish Philharmonic Orchestra, the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra and the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra, amongst others.

He works closely with the conductor Marie Jacquot, whom he has assisted in concerts with the WDR Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Danish Orchestra.

He made his opera debut at the age of 25, conducting parts of a performance of Bizet's Carmen as part of a masterclass at the Plzeň Theatre. His two-week collaboration with Riccardo Muti at the latter's Italian Opera Academy on Mozart's Don Giovanni in 2025 was particularly memorable. Most recently, he worked as an assistant to Iván López Reynoso on Verdi's Nabucco at the Savonlinna Opera Festival in 2026.

He has also gained valuable insights from masterclasses with Jorma Panula, Johannes Schlaefli and Nicholas Pasquet, where he conducted, amongst others, the Göttingen Symphony Orchestra and the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra. In the summer of 2026, he will conduct at the Fiskars Summer Festival in Finland at the invitation of Jukka-Pekka Saraste and, in the same year, will be a Carlos Miguel Prieto Conducting Fellow at the OAcademy Music Conservatory.

Korbinian Krol's initial studies were in church music, choral conducting and singing, which he undertook in Freiburg, Helsinki and Zurich. He received his conducting training at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo and is currently completing it under the guidance of Giordano Bellincampi and Michael Schønwandt in Copenhagen. Prior to his conducting career, he pursued a career as a singer, performing as the Evangelist in Bach's oratorios and contributing to various professional chamber choirs in Germany.

His career has been supported by scholarships from the Cusanuswerk, the German Bishops' Conference's Student Support Programme and the Richard Wagner Association in Freiburg.

Photo credits: Alexander Banck-Petersen (Korbinian)

Up next in our Meet the conductors-series we have conductors Jacobus de Jager and Xiao Geng!

🌟 Jacobus de Jager
South African conductor Jacobus de Jager is the 2025/26 Junior Fellow in Conducting at the Royal Northern College of Music and a conducting fellow on the Royal Philharmonic Society's Conducting Programme. He was recently one of the final seven conductors in the 2026 Mahler Competition in Bamberg and has been selected as one of four conductors for the Lucerne Festival's Contemporary Conducting Programme. He has worked with leading orchestras including the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, Manchester Camerata, The Hallé, Orchestre national de Metz Grand Est, and Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra.

🌟 Xiao Geng
Xiao Geng is a conductor from Shanghai, China. At the age of 16, she began her
conducting studies at the High School affiliated with the Shanghai Conservatory of
Music and later completed her undergraduate degree at the Conservatory, where she studied with Professors Guoyong Zhang and Daye Lin. Recognized early as one of the most promising young conductors in China, she has worked with professional orchestras across the country and received strong critical acclaim.
She then moved to the United States, where she was awarded a full scholarship to
pursue her Master of Music in orchestral conducting at the University of Cincinnati
College-Conservatory of Music (CCM), studying with Mark Gibson. At CCM, she
served as a graduate assistant and assistant conductor for the orchestras.
Following the global pandemic, Geng began to establish an international profile,
receiving invitations to major festivals and masterclasses. Her recent engagements
include the Nordic Conducting Masterclass with Jorma Panula (2025), the Cabrillo
Festival of Contemporary Music with Cristian Măcelaru (2025), the NDR
Elbphilharmonie masterclass with Alan Gilbert (2024), and a masterclass in Basel
with Johannes Schlaefli and Nicolás Pasquet.

Photo credits: Carmen Reynolds, Dina Photography

Six rising conductors were chosen after a very selective application process to take part in the annual Fiskars Conducting Masterclass, and work with the Fiskars Festival Orchestra and conducting mentors Jukka-Pekka Saraste, Vasily Petrenko and Dima Slobodeniouk. Let's meet them!

🌟Nina Haug
Swiss conductor Nina Haug is serving as a conducting fellow of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra in Hamburg for the 2026/27 season. Recent highlights include concerts with the Magdeburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the Kristiansand Symphony Orchestra, the Tapiola Sinfonietta and the Sinfonietta Schaffhausen at the Tonhalle Zurich. She won second prize in the Siemens Hallé International Conducting Competition 2026. Nina Haug is based in Oslo where she is a member of the Norwegian Dirigentforum.

🌟Kentaro Machida
Kentaro Machida is a Japanese conductor and winner of the 7th International Athens Conducting Competition. He was selected as one of five conductors internationally by Riccardo Muti for the Italian Opera Academy in Tokyo, where he participated in masterclasses and conducted Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra. He has conducted orchestras including the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Deutsches-Symphonie Orchester Berlin, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt, Warmian-Masurian Philharmonic Orchestra, and Cyprus Symphony Orchestra.
Kentaro completed a master’s degree in orchestral conducting at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, studying with Martyn Brabbins, and he is currently undertaking the Advanced Professional Training Programme at the Universität der Künste Berlin. A graduate of the University of Oxford, he was Organ Scholar at Merton College and is an Associate of the Royal College of Organists.

Photo credits: Sveinung Bjorå, Edward Webb