Sarah Ioannides

As a music director and conductor committed to diversity, collaboration, innovation and education, Sarah Ioannides invigorates programming and inspires audiences.  Praised by the New York Times for her “unquestionable strength and authority”, she is Music Director of Washington State’s Symphony Tacoma. As newly appointed Director of Orchestral Activities and Professor of Orchestral Conducting at the School of Fine Arts at Boston University, she is the Founding Artistic Director of Cascade Conducting & Composing.

Born in Australia of Cypriot and Scottish descent, Sarah Ioannides trained in the UK (Oxford University, Guildhall School) and USA (Juilliard School and Curtis Institute) on a Fulbright Scholarship, receiving degrees including a Masters in Music and a Master of Arts. Before assuming her role at Symphony Tacoma, she established a reputation as the dynamic music director of the El Paso Symphony Orchestra and the Spartanburg Philharmonic.

Since becoming the first woman to hold a full-time conducting position as Assistant Conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, her conducting career has taken her to six continents. She has appeared as a guest conductor with major orchestras across North America, among them the Buffalo Philharmonic, Charleston Symphony, Florida Orchestra, Hawai’i Symphony, Louisville Orchestra, North Carolina Symphony, Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, Rochester Philharmonic, San Antonio Philharmonic, Seattle Symphony (untitled series) and the Toledo Symphony.

Beyond North America, Sarah Ioannides’ engagements include the Bilbao Symphony, Brussels Philharmonic, Daejeon Philharmonic, Gothenburg Symphony, Konzerthausorchester, Malmö Symphony, Nordic Chamber Orchestra, Tonkünstler-Orchester, Orchestre National de Lyon, Royal Philharmonic and Simón Bolívar Orchestra.      

Her extensive repertoire spans four centuries and has been enriched through her work with living composers, not least as the conductor of over 60 world, North American and European premieres.   She has collaborated with such figures as John Corigliano, Aaron J Kernis, Zosha Di Castri, Patrice Rushen, Bernard Roumain, Dario Marianelli and Tan Dun, notably taking charge of the Australian and Greek premieres of his Water Passion after St. Matthew and acting as his assistant conductor with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and BBC Symphony Orchestra.  One of her earliest operatic projects was the European premiere of Stephen Paulus’s The Woodlanders.

Among the conservatory orchestras she conducts are those of Yale University, Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music and Bloomington’s Jacobs School of Music, in addition to conducting and training young orchestras, including NYO-USA (resident conductor), South African National Youth Orchestra, Youth Orchestra of Andalusia and the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra.

Ioannides sits on numerous advisory and community boards and served as a panellist of the National Endowment for the Arts and delegate at the World Culture Summit in Abu-Dhabi. In 2024, she will return to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s Women in Classical Music Symposium.