Much in demand in Japan, Nodoka Okisawa enjoys working regularly with such orchestras as Yomiuri Nippon Symphony, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, NHK Symphony, Tokyo Symphony and Japan Philharmonic. In February 2025 she conducted a full run of Bizet’s "Carmen" at Tokyo Nikikai Opera Foundation and she will return to them in future seasons. She had previously worked at this house on Lehár's "The Merry Widow". Her first encounter with the Saito Kinen Orchestra was at the 2022 Matsumoto festival, where she conducted Mozart’s "Le Nozze di Figaro" in a production by Laurent Pelly and at the 2025 Festival she conducted Britten’s "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" to great international critical acclaim.

Nodoka Okisawa is the winner of the prestigious Concours international de jeunes chefs d'orchestre de Besançon 2019, where she was awarded the ‘Grand Prix’, the Orchestra Prize and the Audience Prize. Furthermore, in 2018, she won the Tokyo International Music Competition for Conducting, one of the most important international conducting competitions.

From 2020 to 2022, Nodoka Okisawa held a scholarship at the Karajan-Akademie of the Berliner Philharmoniker and was also assistant to Kirill Petrenko. In addition to her own concert projects with the academy members of the Berliner Philharmoniker, she also conducted the Solidarity Concert for Ukraine in March 2022 with members of the Berliner Philharmoniker at the invitation of the Federal President of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Another highlight was the joint anniversary concert with Kirill Petrenko to mark the 50th anniversary of the Karajan-Akademie in May 2022. In 2023, Nodoka Okisawa was awarded the ‘Hideo Saito Memorial Fund Award’ by the Sony Music Foundation and in 2020 she received the Akeo Watanabe Music Foundation Award.

Born in Aomori, Japan, she learned to play the piano, cello and oboe from an early age. She studied conducting at the Tokyo University of the Arts with Ken Takaseki and Tadaaki Otaka and graduated with a master’s degree. In 2019, she obtained her second master’s degree at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin under Christian Ehwald and Hans-Dieter Baum. Nodoka Okisawa lives in Berlin with her husband, two children and two cats.

SEASON 2026/ 2027