Kamna Gupta
Music Director, ‘Merry Widow’
Kamna Gupta is an American Prize-winning conductor experienced in operatic, orchestral, and choral repertoires. This summer, Ms. Gupta conducts a new arrangement of Poul Ruder’s The Handmaid’s Tale at the Banff Centre for the Arts, and Lehar’s The Merry Widow with Highlands Opera Studio. She also joins the Wintergreen Music Festival as the conductor and harpsichordist for their MountainTop Masterworks I: Bach, Haydn, Ravel and Friends concert. In 2024-2025, Ms. Gupta conducted the world premiere of Chaker and Shlesinger’s Ruinous Gods with Spoleto Festival USA, workshops of Kirkland Snider’s Hildegard with Cincinnati Opera, Beth Morrison Projects, and Mannes Opera, and Maria de Buenos Aires with Madison Opera. She was a guest prep conductor with the Manhattan School of Music, covered several concerts with New York Philharmonic and the Chicago Sinfonietta, and served as faculty for Interplay with the Banff Centre. She also took The Ritual of Breath is the Rite to Resist to the Lincoln Center Summer for the City Festival, after music directing and conducting its world premiere and tour in 2022.
Ms. Gupta recently led the Trinity Church Wall Street Choirs and NOVUS in Luna Pearl Woolf's oratorio Number Our Days as part of the inaugural season of New York's newest venue, the Perelman Performing Arts Center. Conducting highlights include Rocking Horse Winner with Tapestry Opera, which was recorded to much acclaim and was featured on CBC Music's Saturday Afternoon at the Opera; Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de perlesk in her debut with Vancouver Opera; Du Yun and McQuilken’s In Our Daughter’s Eyes in her debut with PROTOTYPE Festival and in the world premiere with LA Opera; La Calisto with Mannes Opera; Composer Portraits at the Miller Theatre, A Cockroach’s Tarantella, and Du Yun’s Zolle with International Contemporary Ensemble; and five seasons with the Glimmerglass Festival, including the world premieres of Morris and Fuentes’s The Rip Van Winkles and Sankaram and O’Rourke’s Jungle Book. She has cover conducted with Washington National Opera (world premiere of Songbird) and Atlanta Opera (Candide – chorus master). Other engagements include performing in a masterclass with Stéphane Dénève at the New World Symphony, conducting with Beth Morrison Projects (Next Generation Competition), Spoleto Festival USA (Music in Time series, La bohème, cover for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony), Seattle Opera, the Royal Opera in Versailles, American Lyric Theater, Sarasota Opera, and Opera Saratoga.
Active internationally, Gupta’s orchestral credits include performances in France, Germany, Russia, and the Czech Republic; leading the Leipzig Barockorchester in an all-Bach program was a special highlight. Previous engagements include New York Youth Symphony as an apprentice conductor and her role as a Conducting Fellow with the Atlantic Music Festival, where she recorded many contemporary works by living composers.
Gupta’s passion for education has also led her to work with education departments at the New York Philharmonic and the Castleton Festival. Based in New York City, she is active as a pianist and harpsichordist in addition to conducting. Gupta received her Master of Music in Orchestral Conducting from Arizona State University and her Bachelor of Arts in Music from Princeton University, where she graduated cum laude.