German-born conductor Erina Yashima has been awarded the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association’s International Sir Georg Solti Conducting Apprenticeship. As part of the two-year apprenticeship, Yashima is assisting CSO Music Director Riccardo Muti and working with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago.
Previously, Yashima was appointed répétiteur with conducting duties of the Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern where she made her conducting debut in December 2015. From 2013 to 2015, she was the music director of the Freies Studentenorchester Rostock. In 2013 she was given the Award of outstanding excellence by the Musikakademie Rheinsberg for the opera production she conducted there. Her guest conducting experiences include a collaboration with El Sistema in Venezuela, where she worked with two youth orchestras in 2015.
Yashima was active participant of Riccardo Muti's Italian Opera Academy at the Ravenna Festival 2015. In the same year she was selected by Bernard Haitink as one of seven candidates to take an active part in his conducting master class during the Lucerne Festival. Also in 2015 she was chosen as one of the top three finalists at the workshop “INTERAKTION” of the “Critical Orchestra” by members of major orchestras such as Berlin Philharmonic, Staatskapelle Berlin and Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden. During the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena Gianluigi Gelmetti awarded her the Diploma di Merito and invited her to conduct the Orchestra Sinfonica di Sanremo in September 2014.
The orchestras that Yashima conducted include the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen, Stuttgarter Kammerorchester, Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt (Oder), Neubrandenburger Philharmonie, Brandenburger Symphoniker, Südwestdeutsches Kammerorchester Pforzheim, Kurpfälzisches Kammerorchester Mannheim, North Czech Philharmonic Teplice, Festival Strings Lucerne, Orchestra Giovanile “Luigi Cherubini” and New Music ensembles of the NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover.
As pre-college piano student of Bernd Goetzke Yashima started her musical studies at the Institute for the Early Advancement of the Musically Highly Gifted (IFF) in Hannover where she got her first conducting lessons at the age of 14. After studying conducting in Freiburg with Scott Sandmeier and in Vienna with Mark Stringer, she is completing her studies in conducting at the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin under the guidance of Christian Ehwald and Hans-Dieter Baum.