Armed with intensity and depth, Keitaro Harada consistently provides riveting concerts and opera performances in Asia, the Americas, and Europe. As Music and Artistic Director of the Savannah Philharmonic since the 2020/21 season, Harada has transformed the orchestra and energized its audiences throughout the community with his imaginative programs and charismatic presence. In the 2025/26 season, he began a five-year tenure as Music and Artistic Director of the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, where he regularly conducts the Dayton Opera and Dayton Ballet. In 2024, Harada was named Permanent Conductor of the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor and Artistic Partner for the Aichi Chamber Orchestra. He has forged a close connection with the NHK Symphony Orchestra with whom he appears frequently and has recorded three albums. Harada’s eclectic musical scope ranges from symphony, opera, and chamber music to pops, film scores, educational outreach, and multidisciplinary projects, all of which enrich his programming. Harada is a recipient of the 2023 Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award.

In the 2026/27 season, Harada debuts with the World Youth Symphony Orchestra at Interlochen, New Jersey Symphony, and Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and returns to Adelaide Symphony. Recent seasons included debuts with the Charleston, Cincinnati, and Utah Symphonies and a return to North Carolina Symphony. Additional highlights include engagements with the symphony orchestras of Indianapolis, Houston, Seattle, NHK, Yomiuri Nippon, Osaka, Tokyo, Hawaii, Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Memphis, Louisiana, Charlotte, West Virginia, Tucson, Phoenix, and Virginia, as well as the Osaka Philharmonic, Kanagawa Philharmonic, Nagoya Philharmonic, Japan Philharmonic, New Japan Philharmonic, Tokyo Philharmonic, and Orquesta Filarmónica de Sonora in Mexico.

Well versed in the operatic canon, Harada was a Seiji Ozawa Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center in 2010, where he delivered a critically acclaimed performance of Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos. In 2024, he debuted with Dayton Opera conducting Aida, and in 2026 he returned for Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. He continues in upcoming Dayton Opera productions of The Magic Flute, La bohème, and West Side Story. He has led performances of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, Bizet’s Carmen, and Britten’s Turn of the Screw at North Carolina Opera; Mazzoli’s Song from the Uproar at Cincinnati Opera; and Carmen at Bulgaria’s Sofia National Opera, which he subsequently conducted on a tour of Japan in 2018. In past seasons and as Associate Conductor of Arizona Opera, he conducted Don Pasquale, La fille du régiment, and Tosca.

In the 2022/23 season, he made his debut at Nikikai Opera in Tokyo, leading performances of Orphée aux enfers. He returned to Cincinnati Opera to conduct a critically acclaimed Madama Butterfly as part of an all-Japanese creative team and led La fanciulla del West at North Carolina Opera and La fille du régiment at Nissay Theatre in Tokyo.

Harada was Associate Conductor for four years at the Cincinnati Symphony and Pops, where he regularly assisted with Music Director Louis Langrée and collaborated with James Conlon and Juanjo Mena at the orchestra’s annual May Festival. He is a six-time recipient of The Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Award, and in 2013 he was invited to the Bruno Walter National Conductor Preview. Harada has released eight albums with various orchestras. He studied with Lorin Maazel at Castleton Festival and Fabio Luisi at the Pacific Music Festival, where, at Valery Gergiev’s invitation, he served on the festival’s faculty in 2016, 2018, and 2021.