Barbara Hannigan

A Canadian soprano and conductor who became chief conductor and artistic director of the Iceland Symphony in the autumn of 2026. She is principal guest conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony and of the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra as well, and holds a professorship at the Royal Academy of Music in London. She has made eight records for Alpha Classics, won a Grammy for Crazy Girl Crazy in 2017 and the Polar Music Prize in 2025, and founded Equilibrium Young Artists in 2017 and Momentum: our future, now in 2020, both of them for younger musicians. She grew up in Waverley in Nova Scotia and lives in Finistère, on the north-west coast of France. She first played with this orchestra in 2022.