“Each subtle gesture of Kondakçi’s baton seemed to suspend time...
The audience was transfixed.”
About
Kristo Kondakçi is a conductor of unusual intensity and warmth, known for his deeply collaborative style, the depth of sound he draws from his ensembles, and spoken introductions that have made his concerts a meeting place between symphonic tradition and contemporary audiences. As the Music Director of the Kendall Square Orchestra, he leads one of the most distinctive American orchestras of his generation, recently praised by the Boston Musical Intelligencer for an "inspired and inspiring" Mahler Sixth.
What’s in Motion Right Now?
My Dear Friends,
A new season is beginning, and I find myself entering it with an enormous sense of possibility.
At Kendall Square Orchestra, we are launching our 2026/27 season, Questions for Our Time, built around a simple idea: that an orchestra can be a place where we gather not only to hear extraordinary music, but to wrestle together with some of the deepest questions of being human.
We begin in October at Sanders Theatre with Voices of Freedom, asking: What does it mean to be free? Through music by Copland, William Grant Still, and Beethoven, we will explore freedom not as an abstraction, but as something lived, fought for, inherited, threatened, and continually reimagined.
That question opens into an entire season of searching. Each program begins with a different human question, asking what music might reveal that words alone cannot.
At the same time, K²O itself is entering an important new chapter. The orchestra has grown enormously over the past several years, artistically and institutionally, and we are now doing the deeper work of building something meant to last. With new Board leadership, an expanding community of musicians and supporters, new artistic initiatives, and the launch of The Platform, a new concert venue in Kendall Square, we are continuing to explore what a genuinely civic orchestra might look like in the 21st century.
I remain convinced that the future of classical music will belong to institutions willing to make great art while also asking why that art matters, whom it serves, and what kind of human community it can help create.
Beyond K²O, this season is opening several new chapters in my own work. In February 2027, I will make my conducting debut with the Portland Symphony Orchestra, following a season of working closely with the orchestra. I am also continuing my work as a professor of conducting at Berklee, developing projects with Juventas New Music Ensemble and PARMA Recordings, and contributing to the President’s Council at New England Conservatory as NEC thinks deeply about its own future and the future of music education.
What connects all of this for me is a growing conviction that conducting is, in addition to what happens on the podium, about building communities, developing institutions, helping new music come into the world, teaching the next generation, and creating the conditions in which people can encounter something meaningful together.
There is a great deal in motion right now: new music, new questions, new collaborations, and the slow work of building relationships and institutions that might outlast any one concert.
I am very glad you are here for it.
With warm wishes,
